I like public meetings. Thirty years ago in Britain it seemed axiomatic that mass media had killed them off, and that nobody would venture out on a foggy evening to sit on a hard chair when they could get ministers and stars piped to their living room. Henceforth, it seemed, public conversation would be conducted by an elite of professional controversialists, with token audiences of “ordinary” people.
Yet what is this? People still like to gather, breathe the same air as the speakers, put up their hand, observe them without a camera angle. The most unlikely entertainers fill theatres — Tony Benn, Alastair Campbell. Literary festivals and university debates flourish. We seem to love them. And I certainly don’t regret flogging out last Thursday to Mile End for “Dialogue with Islam”.
This is a freestanding body run by young Shahinoor Ali as “a bridge of understanding between Western intellectuals and the Muslim community in Britain . . . on identity, ethnicity, citizenship, belonging and otherness”. They have discussed the “War on Terror”, poverty, family values , bombers; it gets speakers like Malcolm Rifkind and Roger Mosey of BBC News, and Philip C. Bobbitt, the former US Director for Intelligence, wrote “the audience was the best part . . . some were hostile but by and large they seemed willing to listen to my answers patiently”.
I acted as chairman; the debate was on the veil, especially the full-face niqab, and Mr Bobbitt is right. The audience were the stars. I came away heartened, amused and fonder of my fellow citizens. I need to say this because a co-panellist, Deborah Orr, wrote in scornful terms of the evening, claiming that these were “a bunch of people who have nothing positive to say about Britain or its culture” and that she was “jeered ” for questioning the idea that Muslims are univerally demonised.
Me, I heard only a faint susurration of disagreement, but perhaps I get out more and thus have a higher threshold of jeer-awareness. It is true that she was the only panellist who opposed the full veil strongly on feminist grounds — the other non-Muslim was the sweet-natured editor of Vogue, whose stance was of affable curiosity. It is true that the two female Muslim intellectuals on the panel did go on rather about demonisation, foreign policy and racism. But the audience, from where I was sitting, were great: attentive, intelligent, ready to laugh.
Both communities clearly accepted Dialogue with Islam’s rule about tempering frankness with courtesy. A middle-aged white man blokeishly observed that whenever he saw a heavily veiled woman he felt insulted, as if all men were a sexual threat to anyone not bundled into invisibility. Muslims politely denied this, putting forward theological and historical reasons why some women choose the niqab over the simple headscarf (only two niqab-wearers in the audience, incidentally).
A Muslim husband said that his wife chose it, and this was fine by him but that the hijab — showing her face — would also be fine. Asked whether he would mind if she went without, he said it couldn’t arise. Why? “It would not be the will of Allah.” Some laughed, including bareheaded Muslim women. A French student said she was alarmed by women looking “like ghosts”. A lot of people said look, it’s just a bit of cloth, how can cloth matter? (A brave thing to say with the editor of Vogue in the room.)
I liked best the moments when the dialogue was an exchange of emotion, an admission of feelings. It was good to have the student speaking of “ghosts”, and good to have women who had worn the niqab saying it made them feel not only more devout but more private, especially in times of divorce or bereavement. I admitted a moment of discomfort myself: on the way in, crossing the Mile End Road and finding myself face to face with a full black veil, as we jinked from side to side to avoid collision, I gave the usual smilingly embarrassed grimace, yet her invisibility denied me any answering smile. When I said this, a cheerful bearded man in the audience whose wife wears one said: “You should have greeted her. She can speak, you know!’ We agreed that next time I meet a niqab-wearer in the street I will say “Good morning!” and expect a response.
Exchanging feelings and fears openly is useful. When someone said that the full veil made them fear an enemy underneath, it was pointed out that the London Tube bombers were undisguised men. When a speaker said suspicion of Muslims was all the Government’s fault, the guilt of killers who use Islam was pointed out equally firmly.
The extreme immodesty of some Western women was criticised, but the last word went to a girl in a hijab who said that she personally doesn’t judge anyone by their looks, and that when she sees a bottle-blonde Westerner with skimpy clothes she wouldn’t dream of calling her a bimbo, and expects not to be judged herself. A Muslim panellist muttered “Well, I can judge Pamela Anderson”, so I took the chair’s privilege of saying no, she couldn’t. Not on appearance, anyway. The meeting broke up in good spirits, and spilt its cheerfulness out into the streets.
We need such events. The real issues are war, justice, poverty, and terrorism — not cloth. Yet in a survey one third of UK respondents want the face veil to be illegal, even outside workplaces. The Dutch are planning a ban. In Italy a right-wing MP who opposed it is under police protection. Even hijabs are banned in French schools. And the more bans, the more women will feel defiant, in much the same way that I found myself rummaging for a long-unworn cross after the prissy British Airways and newsreader bans.
But that night we were all trying to live and let live. It was very British. It was actually fun.
Libby Purves