The UK Independence Party is to call for a ban on the burka and the niqab — the Islamic cloak that covers women from head to toe and the mask that conceals most of the face — claiming they affront British values. The policy, which a number of European countries are also debating, is an attempt by UKIP to broaden its appeal and address the concerns of disaffected white working-class voters.
UKIP would be the first national party to call for a total ban on burkas, though the far-Right BNP believes they should be banned from schools.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the leader of UKIP, said yesterday: “We are taking expert advice on how we could do it. It makes sense to ban the burka — or anything which conceals a woman’s face — in public buildings.
But we want to make it possible to ban them in private buildings. It isn’t right that you can’t see someone’s face in an airport.”
He explained that UKIP wanted to bring to the fore the issue of the increasing influence of Sharia in Britain: “We are not Muslim bashing, but this is incompatible with Britain’s values of freedom and democracy.”
Nigel Farage, the former UKIP party leader, will announce tomorrow that the party believes the fabric of the country is under threat from Sharia and that forcing women to conceal their identity in public is not consistent with traditional Britishness.
UKIP believes that the burka and the niqab have no basis in Islam, are a threat to gender equality, marginalise women and endanger the public safety because terrorists could use them to hide their identity.
In the general election, UKIP hopes to build on success at the June European polls when it secured the second-largest share of the vote, more than 16 per cent. It also hopes to win its first Westminster seats.
UKIP has been known primarily as a single-issue Eurosceptic party composed of disaffected Tories. But over the next two months it plans to publish papers on a number of policy areas such as welfare into work, transport, healthcare and tax. Its manifesto will specify policy measures, — a clarity that UKIP says other parties lack.
UKIP has said that it would increase Britain’s military budget by 40 per cent and bring back grammar schools. The party also believes that fewer school leavers should go to university, and that the less academic teenagers should be encouraged to learn a trade. It would also seek to revolutionise teacher training. Lord Pearson said that the current process was “rotten”.
Mr Farage, who stood down last year to fight the Buckingham seat held by John Bercow, Speaker of the Commons, told The Times yesterday: “UKIP has always been good at showing what it is against, but we are now trying to demonstrate to voters how an independent Britain would be governed. I am going to be talking about Britishness, about the national identity and the genuine threat that Sharia law poses. Alarm bells should have sounded when the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the adoption of Sharia law in the UK was unavoidable.”
Two years ago Rowan Williams triggered a row over Sharia when he argued that Britain had to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system and that adopting parts of Islamic law would help to maintain social cohesion. Mr Farage declined to be drawn on a proposed burka ban.
In France, President Sarkozy is trying to outlaw the wearing of full veils on state premises such as university campuses and hospitals, and on public transport. All the main French parties and most of the public are opposed to women wearing full veils but, after six months of parliamentary hearings, it is apparent that a blanket ban would be unworkable and likely to backfire.
Mr Sarkozy wants an all-party consensus to make clear that full veils contradict French principles while avoiding measures that would stigmatise Muslims.
In Denmark, Conservatives in the coalition government have demanded a ban on the burka and the niqab in public. In October 2009 the Muslim Canadian Congress called for a ban on the burka and the niqab, arguing that they have “no basis in Islam”.
Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council for Britain, told The Times: “UKIP is supposed to be proud of Britain’s traditions and values, which include freedom or speech, association and religion.
“The overwhelming majority of women who wear the burka do so out of a sense of religious duty. It is their interpretation of their religion. UKIP have no right to overrule that. It is nobody else’s business."
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
format_quote Originally Posted by Life_Is_Short
Why can't they use their energy on more important issues?
Probably because few people are actually interested in their party so they want to attract some attention and support by focusing on an issue which is bound to do just that. See my next post!
"I spent thirty years learning manners, and I spent twenty years learning knowledge."
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
Veil of Ignorance
UKIP’s proposed ban on burkas is deeply cynical and wrong
There is a darkly comic moment in Harold Nicolson’s diaries, when the author sits down with his old ally Sir Oswald Mosley and discusses a uniform for his New Party. Mosley says that he is thinking of black shirts. Nicolson, still innocent of his friend’s intention to turn the New Party into the British Union of Fascists, suggests that perhaps members should wear grey flannels with a marigold buttonhole.
The leadership of UKIP are almost certainly similarly ignorant of the path that they are now treading. But their new policy of banning people from wearing the burka is a step towards a very dark place indeed, for them and for their followers. They should stop now, before it is too late.
The party leadership may share Nicolson’s ignorance, but not his naivety. The call to ban the burka is deeply cynical, for the political thinking behind their policy is obvious. Very few people share UKIP’s European obsession. Indeed, in a recent poll only 3 per cent named the European Union as an important political issue. Since UKIP’s poll rating hovers at 4 per cent, this suggests that at least a quarter even of the party’s current supporters think it is being a bit of a bore. So the party has decided to change the subject. It will campaign on immigration.
It is, therefore, stirring racial discontent, for its own electoral benefit and this is reprehensible. Calling for withdrawal from the EU is respectable, if wrong-headed. Increasing fear and misunderstanding between communities is not.
The reasons it gives for its policy are transparently disingenuous. They claim that the burka marginalises women. This is a new concern for UKIP. It is, after all, the party of Godfrey Bloom, the MEP who says that “any small businessman or woman who employs a woman of child-bearing age needs their head examined”. Perhaps Mr Bloom, who thinks that women do not clean behind the fridge enough, worries that their burkas are getting in the way.
UKIP argues further that the burka has no place in Islam and that the religion does not require it. The Times had not hitherto realised that Nigel Farage was an authority on such matters, or that the party leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who was visited by God when on the operating table in 1977, thereby gained not only his Christian faith but also a mastery of the Koran. This newly acquired scholarship notwithstanding, the religious insights of politicians are entirely irrelevant when judging the right of British citizens to dress as they wish.
The most offensive UKIP assertion is that wearing the burka is inconsistent with British values. Advocates of the policy then point out (without irony) that the French, whose example is rarely cited elsewhere in UKIP literature, are trying to implement a similar policy.
What is inconsistent with British values is picking on people quietly going about their business in religious garb of their own choice and banning it. If UKIP properly understood this country, it would appreciate that. There are Islamists who doubtless wish to ban Eurosceptics wearing tweed jackets over v-neck jumpers and checked shirts. And The Times would defend UKIP against such calls because freedom to worship, and freedom of speech, is the British value that matters above all others.
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
The few uneducated people might vote for them but i doubt that they will ever come into power. If they do my family will leave britain and the huge taxes my parents pay will be lost.
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
I must admit, I love the European struggle for identity.. This is a promise of Allah swt being fulfilled.. that Islam pervade Europe without a sword.
For folks who don't believe in islamic prophecies they sure are running off like chickens with their heads cut off..
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
UKIP have chosen to go down the BNP route, and are easily trying to make some policies aside from European integration. I always considered and recommended UKIP a safer and more liberal party with less extreme views than the BNP to potential BNP voters, but it looks like I may no longer be able to do that.
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
UKIP chief Nigel Farage calls for burka ban
The burka and other face-covering veils worn by Muslim women should be banned, the UK Independence Party says.
Ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who leads UKIP's 13 MEPs in Brussels, told the BBC's Politics Show they were a symbol of an "increasingly divided Britain".
He also said they "oppressed" women and were a potential security threat.
But Schools Secretary Ed Balls said it was "not British" to tell people what to wear in the street, and accused UKIP of indulging in "unpleasant politics".
Some European countries, including France, are debating banning the burka, but the issue has sparked controversy when it has been raised in the UK.
UKIP is the first British party to call for a total ban, after the BNP called for it to be banned in Britain's schools.
'Different culture'
But Mr Farage said: "I can't go into a bank with a motorcycle helmet on. I can't wear a balaclava going round the District and Circle line.
As long as they are not imposing it on anybody else they should have the right to wear it Salma Yaqoob, Respect leader
"What we are saying is, this is a symbol. It's a symbol of something that is used to oppress women. It is a symbol of an increasingly divided Britain.
"And the real worry - and it isn't just about what people wear - the real worry is that we are heading towards a situation where many of our cities are ghettoised and there is even talk about Sharia law becoming part of British culture."
A "different" culture was "being forced on parts of Britain and nobody wants that", added Mr Farage, but he denied the policy was an attempt to grab votes from the BNP, insisting it had "nothing to do with the BNP".
"There is nothing extreme or radical or ridiculous about this, but we can't go on living in a divided society," he told The Politics Show.
He said his party was seeking to ban "covering of the face in public places and public buildings" but said it had not yet worked out such a ban would be enforced.
Mr Balls said he was not surprised by Mr Farage's latest policy announcement, but he said no "sensible" or "mainstream" party in Britain would back a ban on face veils.
'Freedom of speech'
He told The Politics Show: "I wouldn't want to be part of a religion myself where we said to women and girls you have to wear a veil, but I also would not want to be in the kind of society where people were told how to dress when they walked down the streets.
"So the idea that we would tell people that you cannot wear a veil in public, I think that's not British, it's unfair, it's not consistent with our traditions of liberty and freedom."
Salma Yaqoob, leader of the anti-war Respect party, also criticised UKIP's proposed ban on the burka.
"I certainly wouldn't want to wear it myself, but then to take it to a step where they are going to ban it because I feel uncomfortable with it is something I would say is very un-British because the British way of life is 'live and let live', freedom of speech, freedom of worship," she said.
"As long as they are not imposing it on anybody else they should have the right to wear it."
UKIP came second in last year's European elections, ahead of the Labour Party, but Mr Farage quit as leader to concentrate on trying to become the party's first MP at Westminster.
His successor, Lord Pearson, has said he wants to step up the party's campaign against radical Islam.
He told the Times the party was taking legal advice on how the burka, or any veil covering a woman's face, could be banned in public places and in private buildings such as airports.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the full burka is "not welcome" in France, but did not explicitly call for a ban, saying "no one should feel stigmatised" by any eventual law.
A French parliamentary report on the issue is due out at the end of January.
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
Just out of curiosity's sake, how many veiled women have any of you guys seen in actual real life in the UK?
To date my veil count is around 50 mark. I've seen a heck of a lot more female muslims without any form of headgear than I have with full veil. And I live in leicester, which is pretty much the single most multi-cultural place in the universe.
At every wedding I have been to, the number of veiled ladies has been negligible. Like 3 out of 200 people.
Even when I went to Makka (THE holiest city in Islam) there weren't THAT many veiled women. I mean, there were veiled muslimahs, but most wore the standard hijab.
Someone said to the Prophet, "Pray to God against the idolaters and curse them." The Prophet replied, "I have been sent to show mercy and have not been sent to curse." (Muslim)
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
format_quote Originally Posted by aamirsaab
Just out of curiosity's sake, how many veiled women have any of you guys seen in actual real life in the UK?
To date my veil count is around 50 mark. I've seen a heck of a lot more female muslims without any form of headgear than I have with full veil. And I live in leicester, which is pretty much the single most multi-cultural place in the universe.
At every wedding I have been to, the number of veiled ladies has been negligible. Like 3 out of 200 people.
Even when I went to Makka (THE holiest city in Islam) there weren't THAT many veiled women. I mean, there were veiled muslimahs, but most wore the standard hijab.
My point is: is a ban on veils really neccessary?
No. The UK is not going to look like Saudi Arabia any time soon, because even though there are around two million Muslims here, only half of them are women, and of those women, not many actually wear the Burka regularly. I've seen around ten women in my lifetime wearing the Burka? If that. The sighting have all been in Central London, and I saw a couple last time at London Zoo. Mind you, I did see a Sephardic Jewish male with a those locks of hair and a what looked like a Catholic priest wearing a massive crucifix and red skull cap (for some reason) at the Zoo so the women weren't completely alone in crazy religious wear! I dont't suspect that in that sense the ban will affect a great deal of people, but it does seem like an attack on Islamic culture, and rightly it will be percieved that way.
Re: UKIP woos white working class with call for total ban on burkas
What I don't understand is that there is no Sharia law in these western countries. These countries are kaafir countries, why would they want to apply Sharia law if they do not even believe in Islam? :confused: Why are they so afraid of the Sharia law if no-one is actually imposing it?
Last edited by AlHoda; 01-17-2010 at 07:21 PM.
Reason: mistake
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As long as they are not imposing it on anybody else they should have the right to wear it
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