as-salamu ‘alaykum,

Actor Stephen Berkoff who generally plays baddies in movies (bad guy in Beverly Hills Cop) in a letter to the Independent defends the niqab:

Veil puts fashion slaves to shame

Sir: Oh dear, what a huge palaver about the Muslim veil. For everyone, it touches some little flame of anxiety.

For Jack Straw it concerns his ability to read the mind on the human face. Can the voice alone not carry infinite shades of meaning? Was poor blind Mr Blunkett that much less capable of reading the inner thoughts of others? For the articulate Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (9 October) it carries an unending proliferation of horrors from sexual repression and slavery to the inability to go swimming. If that is what they wish then let them be, since I have to admit that they are still far more elegant and dignified than some Western women whose sense of self-respect and dignity has long been eroded by their slavish following of the most absurd iniquities of fashion. When I see young women in the street with their buttocks hanging out and their thongs almost obscenely exposed, it hardly inspires admiration, more, I’m afraid, a feeling of revulsion.

I have to admit that the veil does not do this. Archaic it may be but certainly not sluttish or repulsive. There are so many abominations of human dress in the West that we may have just become adjusted to our own slovenliness. I would certainly put the fashion police on our own tacky style but I suppose everything’s up for grabs now in our terror-ridden society.

STEVEN BERKOFF

LONDON E14

wa’as-salam

Mas’ud
www.masud.co.uk