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The Daily Telegraph have decided to equate Aisha Azmi, the classroom assistant in the veil, with Islamic radicalism:
The veil stretches our tolerance to its limits
Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, spoke for almost the entire nation yesterday when he told Aisha Azmi – the Muslim teaching assistant suspended for wearing a veil – "to just let this thing go". An employment tribunal has rightly rejected Mrs Azmi's case for unfair dismissal, though – absurdly – it has awarded her damages for "victimisation" by her local council. Now is indeed the time for her to drop the matter, though, needless to say, she intends to take her case to a "higher court". (Radical Muslims in Britain are quick to explore legal avenues that are not open to Christians in the countries they admire.)
Mrs Azmi's unreasonable demands, coupled with Jack Straw's bold comments about the intimidating aspects of the full-face veil, have forced the British public to think carefully about the presence of Muslim ghettos and Islamic fundamentalists in our society. A clear conclusion has emerged. As a nation, we feel that our tolerance is being stretched to the limit.
Moreover – and this is something that has gone largely unremarked – the behaviour of Mrs Azmi and her suspiciously glib supporters has particularly annoyed many British women. We are not talking here of those earnest feminists who are desperately trying to disentangle their allegiances to multi-culturalism and secularism: the hand-wringing of, say, the Guardian's Madeleine Bunting is a joy to behold. What strikes us is the anger of sane, civilised women at the claim that Mrs Azmi's dismissal impinges on their own rights. That is a preposterous notion. If British women feel any sympathy for the teaching assistant, it is because she appears – ironically, given the casus belli – to have been turned into a mouthpiece for male Islamists who genuinely wish women to endure a form of medieval subjugation.
Yesterday also witnessed an intervention by David Cameron, who warned his fellow politicians not to "pile in" and exacerbate the controversy, and suggested that Muslims in Britain are now feeling "slightly targeted". That is probably true; but both the Tory leader and the Muslim community should ask themselves who, exactly, is targeting whom.
The answer is that Islamic fundamentalists – followers of a puritanical and distinctively Arab version of the faith – are targeting a largely Pakistani community that, until recently, has conspicuously avoided picking fights with its neighbours. It would be interesting to know more about what British Muslim women feel about this process of radicalisation and Arabisation, of which they are often the victims. We suspect that they would agree that Mrs Azmi has done them absolutely no favours, and that she should, in Mr Malik's words, just let this thing go.
The Telegraph forum on the subject is pretty vile too. |
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