Was Jack Straw acting responsibly?

I'm going in a completely different direction with this post, raising a question about something I'm not particularly qualified to talk about. A risk maybe, but a view that I must express nevertheless.

A second UK minister has joined the debate about Muslim women who veil their faces.

Before going any further, I should point out that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Muslim culture or religion, and in this post, I'm not talking of enforced wearing of the veil, only those cases where women choose of their own free will to wear it.

If anyone missed the news this week, Jack Straw wrote an entry for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph where he said: "Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone 'face-to-face' who I could not see." he was referring to a lady wearing a full veil, whom he met almost a year ago at his constituency office.

I don't know much about the veil, and the Muslim community in the UK appears divided on the issue of whether the Koran requires it or whether the Hijab (headscarf) is sufficient (as discussed here). I have read articles where women have said this should be a choice for the individual. For my part, I respect that entirely. Although it has no religious connotation and I am not comparing like for like, I don't accept that I should be forced to remove my jacket hood or my dark sunglasses in order to have a conversation. It's a choice I make. I don't expect to be told that I shouldn't wear a hoodie, a dress or a wedding veil because it might damage community relations. But that's by and by.

What I'm curious about is whether Jack Straw had opened a debate with Muslim groups before bringing this to the public eye. I'm not seeing anything to suggest he did, which leads me to:

my point - I question whether he was being responsible in the way he raised the issue.

I'm making no comment on whether there should be a debate. I think all sides accept that a debate now would be helpful. It's simply whether Jack Straw should have raised this in such a confrontational way without first having brought at least some Muslim groups on board.

I think anyone in the UK today would have to be living in a cabbage patch, not to realise that members of the Muslim culture feel very strongly about their identity and their religion. To publish this in the national press without having consulted Muslim councils seems somewhat naive to me. Since he'd been mulling things over for a whole year before publishing his remarks, he can hardly argue that a consultation process would have taken too long.

The way he's raised the issue does increase the risk that before any debate has taken place, any women who continue to choose to wear a veil, are much more likely to be singled out as causing unnecessary social division by an already divided public. Although in the long term, this debate may result in less cultural tension and violence, in the short term it seems likely that some people may suffer unnecessary discrimination.

It didn't have to be this way.

In western society, we're not only about barging down the door with a battering ram. If Jack Straw wants a more integrated society, I feel he should begin by sensitively involving those he feels are being separatist.