Once again, politicians are debating what Muslim women should and should not wear, without ever thinking to consult us.
Pontificating about what Muslim women wear is nothing new in this country. It feels like every year or so, there’s a new round of cries to “ban the burka!” or save us from the cloths on our heads or faces.
This latest instance was ignited by a question asked by Reform MP Sarah Pochin in Prime Minister's Questions earlier this month, who asked whether Keir Starmer was intending to follow European countries in banning face veils. Kemi Badenoch, clearly desperate to stay relevant to rightwing voters, then bizarrely suggested the burka be banned in the workplace — despite so few British Muslim women wearing it in the first place, let alone in the office.
Wearing a headscarf made me hyper-visible and invisible to those around me. They wanted things from me but they didn’t want to know me.
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At times like these, I am harshly reminded that what politicians argue over in the halls of power has real repercussions for the lives of visibly Muslim women like me. As they discuss the intricacies of which types of veils are acceptable and which should be rendered illegal, they push Muslim women further and further from the fringes of society. We are already disenfranchised and maligned, statistically some of society’s lowest earners and most overlooked for job opportunities, but as politicians rationalise our humanity, we become a symbol of anti-Britishness itself. And that renders us actively unsafe as we go about our everyday lives.
We saw that instances of islamophobia rose by 374% in the aftermath of Boris Johnson infamously referring to covered Muslim women as “letterboxes” in 2018. Friends of mine who wear the niqab actually had “letterbox” hauled at them as a slur in the street, and it inspired a new wave of casual islamophobia towards anyone who looked identifiably Muslim.
Black women can never win – especially ones who dare to marry into the symbol of (white) elitism that is the royal family.
As, once again, our religious dress becomes a political football to pander to the extreme views of certain voters, I am fearful of what this will mean for visibly Muslim women in our everyday lives and in the workplace.
Khadijah, a lawyer in central London who wears the hijab and abaya (a long, loose dress), has identified a marked difference in the way clients have interacted with her in the past couple of weeks, with one even asking to be seen by an “English lawyer” instead. Iman, an anti-abuse campaigner, has been met by those in her close circle, suggesting that Islamophobia in the UK is fabricated and exaggerated. Halima, a mother of three who covers her face on a daily basis had racist abuse hurled at her children in a park. In a climate in which Islamophobia has already risen by 73% in the last year, national discussions like this make Muslim women even less safe than we already were.
What’s ironic is that a common reason for banning face veils is that they are misogynistic. But I have felt more controlled and silenced by white feminists who assume I have no bodily autonomy than I ever have by a cloth on my head. Likewise, safety concerns about what malicious things could be hiding under a burka dwindle into insignificance compared to the very real safety concerns that Muslim women like me have when islamophobia is at a record high in Britain.
Wearing a headscarf made me hyper-visible and invisible to those around me. They wanted things from me but they didn’t want to know me.
Covered Muslim women are the most hypervisible and controversial face of Islam. In the public eye, we symbolise everything that makes Muslimness antithetical to Britishness, and as political discourse continues to sour towards us, it is women who wear the hijab and niqab who are disproportionately impacted by rising Islamophobia. What politicians do in the name of supposedly protecting us, actually demonises us and makes us a public enemy to rally around.
For people who mourn the lost Britain of yesteryear, times like this cement one thing in their mind: it is Muslims, not politicians, that are to blame for the collapse of this nation. And it is covered Muslim women who are the mascots for that social decline.
As a visibly Muslim woman, it feels like we are constantly stuck between two equally as dehumanising sides. This is a phenomenon that has overshadowed my life to such an extent that it inspired my book Veiled Threat: On being visibly Muslim in Britain.
On the one hand, it’s impossible to escape being told we need saving by white feminists who never bother to ask if we feel oppressed in the first place. I’ve lost count of the number of times well-meaning but patronising women have informed me or my friends that we don’t need to cover our heads in Britain, as though expecting us to erupt into gratitude and suddenly become unshackled from whatever controlling man is oppressing us behind closed doors.
Throughout this latest round of the burka debate, throwaway comments about women being allowed to wear “What they want, not what their husbands want” have become commonplace, appearing on talk shows and think pieces everywhere. But whoever said it was fictional, malicious husbands forcing face veils on women in the first place? When other women dress to reject the male gaze, or when celebrities cover their entire bodies on the red carpet, they are subversive and edgy. Why is it that Muslim women are presumed to be incapable of doing the same? It strikes me that it’s more about keeping Muslim women as convenient victims lacking both humanity and a brain, than it is about genuinely wanting the best for us.
Cool and edgy or oppressive and patriarchal? Depends whose head it's on.
Besides, if you really believe the face veil is inherently misogynistic then why don’t we assume that other things rooted in patriarchal beauty standards — whether it’s a miniskirt, bikini, makeup or high heels — aren’t being inflicted on women by some controlling partner? Is anyone rallying to save women from the push-up bra?
On the flip side of this, debates like this bring something else to the surface. We are never solely a victim. We are a dangerous, hidden threat too. Just last year, a peer in the House of Lords claimed that “Muslim radicals” will “take us over through the power of the womb”, casting us as a ticking time bomb, deliberately flooding Britain with more Muslims. We have seen this in the way politicians are talking about burkas and balaclavas interchangeably. Given the associations the balaclava has to crime, it feels like this is a deliberate attempt to tarnish a religious garment with similar ideas.
In fact, I appeared on TV to defend women’s right to wear the niqab last week and afterwards I was inundated with messages from people claiming that burkas are simply a way for male criminals to hide their identity rather than a religious act opted by some women to bring them closer to God.
Ultimately, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the longer we remain a political football to win votes, the less safe we become in our everyday lives. Debates about what Muslim women wear aren't about safeguarding us, they’re about creating an increasingly narrow interpretation of what is acceptably British — all the while eroding our right to exist freely in the place we call home.
"He said he had God-given right to a good wife, meaning I had no right to reject him.”
