Workers' Liberty

Jack Strawsays that he asks Muslim women to take off their veils so that he can talk to them "face to face".

It seems bizarre to ask women to take off the veil in the name of "community relations" and avoiding "a visible statement of separation and difference". They should be able to dress and express themselves as they please, and it is strange to suggest that this makes it difficult to engage with them.

The problem with the veil is not that it is a barrier to inter-community relations. It is that many women do not have the right or ability to choose not to wear it. It is imposed from the outside by patriarchs - a symbol of gender oppression as well as an expression of religious belief.

Earlier today I saw a girl, who must have been no more than 5 or 6 years old, wearing the veil. What is sexual about the hair of such a young child? How can she decide that she wants to wear it?

Many young women do consciously choose to wear the veil and express themselves - they have every right to do so, but underpinning the veil is the doctrine that women must be kept out of public view, safely under the control of their husbands.

Straw says that he is in favour of the right to wear the veil, and opposed the ban in French schools. State bans on religious expression are unacceptable and anti-democratic - but socialists who care about women's rights must also defend those women who, in the face of their families and religious bigotry, decide not to wear the veil. Every day in Iraq, and under theocratic régimes in other countries, women are murdered for making this choice.