Yes, it's time to ban the veil

"Smile please"

It is disingenuous for Muslims to claim that wearing the niqab or burka is Islamic.

The requirement to conceal the face does not feature anywhere in the Koran. It is an archaic, aristocratic custom originating in ancient Persia that spread to Byzantium and was later adopted by misogynistic Muslim society.

Many Muslims have been conditioned to conflate culture with religion and befuddle liberal Britain that this is a principle of religious freedom and human rights when it is neither.

It is against Islamic law for masked women to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca or to perform their daily prayers.

If women are prevented from hiding their identity at Islam's holiest shrine, why is it necessary for them to do so here?

Britain must join France and Belgium in outlawing all public anonymity.

Anything less would amount to sexist discrimination against British men who are not permitted to conceal their identity in public.

There.

That's rather well phrased don't you think?

Trouble is, those are not my words; they appeared in a letter to the editor of The Daily Telegraph earlier this week.

I wish that I could have phrased the issue so well and so succinctly.

The author?.................now let me see........

.....of course, it was none other than Imam Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford.


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