It’s time to ban the burqa and wrap up our cowardly, poisonous love-in with misogyny
How do you feel when you see a woman in a burqa? Perhaps you have not seen one in a while. Perhaps you live in Inverness, or the remotest tip of Wales. But in this part of north London, I see them all the time. I may see maybe three or four niqabs on the way to the Tube. On the bus, always. And whenever I see them, I never, ever get over the way that I feel. I feel livid — ragingly angry — like I have to do something about it. But what? To wear a full-length shroud is to be clinically closed off from the world. It is to be placed in a cloth prison. No matter how much you tell me it is religious expression, how the women want it, how it is their choice — to me, it is enforced disability. These women can’t easily run, walk or see.
So when we saw the pictures of the Archbishop of Canterbury — an avowed “feminist” and first woman in the post — handing an award to Imam Hafiz Ashrafi, a fan of Osama bin Laden, at Lambeth Palace on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, it wasn’t Ashrafi himself who most alarmed me, nor the monstrous stupidity/comedy of the timing.
It was the fact that standing next to him was a single, blank black column of faceless nothingness: his wife. And then there was his daughter, also heavily masked, as if she were ill. How could the Palace not know there was an issue with this man? Every woman in the country knew with a single glance. Even — especially — the ones in burqas.
The line, by the way, on Ashrafi, a Pakistani imam, is that it was all one big mistake. He was a friend of Justin Welby, having somehow facilitated a trip to Pakistan for the then archbishop. He was duly put forward for the Hubert Walter award, some vague Church of England accolade to do with “interfaith” and “reconciliation”. This was, it said, due to his “unwavering commitment” to “promoting religious tolerance”.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t unwavering, or even much of a commitment. Ashrafi was, in fact, a notorious hardliner who in 2007, honoured Bin Laden with the title “the sword of Allah” in response to Salman Rushdie being made a knight.
In 2015 he called for limits on freedom of speech after the murders of journalists at Charlie Hebdo. In 2023 he praised the massacre of October 7. I hardly need tell you he opposes women’s freedom — in 2021 he agreed with Imran Khan, then the prime minister of Pakistan, when Khan said, during a rape epidemic, that it was “common sense” that men would rape women if they wore “very few clothes”.
This was a view that was “legal and in accordance with the Holy Quran,”
Ashrafi said. As Khan put it: men aren’t “robots”.
This is the man Sarah Mullally gave an award.
When is this kind of thing going to stop happening? It is not so much the stupid “mistakes” as the incessant, evil gaslighting. The presentation of men like Ashrafi as friendly and avuncular, the praise of his “tolerance” — tolerance meaning what, anyway? It is the same as the insistent, malicious arguing for separate laws, separate schools, separate communities — for, essentially, ghettos. For the headscarf on female children and the ongoing, mendacious support for the burqa and the niqab, using our own liberalism as a weapon against us.
“It’s her choice.”
“She loves it” — that is the line of the hard left in this country when it comes to full face coverings.
“She loves it.” Ever heard that before? We cannot continue pretending any of this is normal, that it fits our cultural values, that we are the country we were 20 years ago. Why aren’t feminists tearing their hair out? Or are they excusing this behaviour for fear it’s them their friends on the left will call racist? Left-wing newspapers, of course, have hardly covered this story at all.
Sarah Mullally, by the way — I cannot think of a better example of mimsy cowardice and self-indulgence. When she was elected this year, the first thing she said was that she would “speak” against misogyny. When misogyny physically turned up at the Palace, though, she said zero. She even posed for a picture with it, awkwardly laughing it off.
Did she want to look cool, as they all do — was it even an “interfaith” flex: “Look, I’ve healed September 11”? Or didn’t she care enough? Is she a coward, like no Archbishop of Canterbury should ever be (look at history: it’s pretty much top of the job description)? What kind of beacon is she for women — for humanity — if she cannot ask questions, say no, set standards, make calls? If she cannot see the other woman before her? She should apologise but she won’t.
‘She loves it’ — that is the line of the hard left in this country when it comes to full face coverings
I would like us to begin seeing the other women before us, the many thousands of invisible women who, like Mrs Ashrafi, are obliterated by the burqa in this country. I would like us to bother to say this is unacceptable, as is primary schools coercing entire families of girls to wear headscarves long before they are adults. I would like us to stop giving tacit support to female oppression from the youngest age — if you have any doubts about agency, let me tell you: there is no way a child who cannot even read yet is able to choose a headscarf.
I do not think a six-year-old can choose it, any more than a woman in an oppressive, patriarchal regime chooses a burqa. For those women, the only security is being part of the group, and the only way to be part of that group is to shroud yourself.
In France the burqa has been illegal since 2011, as have headscarves for under-16s in schools. Portugal brought in its own similar “burqa law” last month. Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Austria — all ban full face coverings.
Normally this argument — “many other countries do it, especially European ones” — is more than enough to convince the left. Decriminalising abortion: it brought us “in line with 50 other countries” — that was the line they parroted.
In this case, however — nothing.
No TikToks from Stella Creasy, no outraged trans warriors. No bleeding heart tapestries, yoga-for-women’sfreedom sessions, no osteopaths-turnedactivists posting 50 times a day.
No cake sales, no protests, no makeup-free celebrities making their drunk points. No reminding us of the horrific physical and mental ailments the burqa brings — the fact that in Afghanistan, where the burqa is law, 80 per cent of suicides are women. The only face coverings that are banned in this country are ones on people who want to protest against this stuff. How does that happen? No one wants to curb the poisonous love-in with one of the most woman-hating ideologies on earth — that is how it happens. Ban the burqa and ban all religious clothing in schools for under-16s.
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