Alice Thomson

<!–

–>

I confess that I once fell over on the job. In 2001 I was sent near the Pakistan border to interview fleeing Afghans and the local imam asked me to wear an extra-large faded blue burka in the refugee camp. I was taken to interview a woman who had lost five of her six children before managing to walk with her baby across the mountains to safety.

As she described the pain of losing four daughters and her only son, one by one, to mines, malnutrition and a motorcycle accident, I couldn’t see her anguish. Until finally, from behind her burka, I heard a sob.

Stuck in my own diaphanous garment, I couldn’t communicate, I couldn’t even put an arm out or blink at her, so I stood up and waddled over. But I tripped, half-blind from the veil and we ended up sprawled on the ground together. I couldn’t see her reaction, but then she started to giggle as we lay like two penguins, unable to stand up.

That’s when I realised that the burka was wrong. It allows for no communication, no empathy and it’s deeply impractical.

//

In Hyde Park on the only hot day of last summer, I was sitting on a bench in a pair of shorts, watching my child stalking pigeons with another boy. His mother sat opposite me in her burka. From her eyes I couldn’t tell whether she was frowning in disgust at my bare legs or smiling as our children squealed. When her son ran in front of a swing, she sat helpless as I scooped him up. When I offered her an ice cream, I realised that she couldn’t eat it. We had sons the same age and were both wearing ballet pumps, but we were divided by the piece of cloth across her face.

Expressions are crucial for human interaction — and it’s all in the face. A two-week-old baby can distinguish between expressions of sadness, happiness and surprise. Using only 30 facial muscles, an adult can produce 10,000 facial reactions. The American psychologist Paul Ekman, the author of Emotions Revealed, explains that our ability to read faces is the key to our understanding of other people as well as our ability to get on with others.

Professor Peter Butler, who is working on Britain’s first face transplant, says that people can adjust to artificial limbs without losing their sense of identity, but their face is vital for self-belief: “The face is the first feature we look at. It’s about survival, it’s how we work out whether someone will attack or embrace us. Even sunglasses can create a barrier.”

David Blunkett, the former Cabinet minister, says that being blind means that he has to rely on touch and voice. A burka makes it harder for both sides to touch or even hear. Take teachers and pupils. When a student of Brandon Robshaw, a London teacher, turned up for his philosophy A-level class in a burka, he was horrified. “Discussion and argument are vital,” he explains. “Wearing a burka is like turning up for a ballet lesson in diving boots.”

Face time, face-to-face, losing face, all these phrases show how we rely on scrutinising each other’s reactions, as do concerns about Botox and facelifts. The burka is not an invisibility cloak, it’s a passive- aggressive statement, a rejection of the community. The person wearing it is signalling that either she or her family wants her to remain apart from society. It implies that wearers believes that British men may become dangerously lecherous if they see their faces and that British women are too provocatively clad. Like smoking, wearing a burka doesn’t affect just the wearers, but those around them, who may feel shunned. With full-body tattoos, face piercing and a hoody, you can still smile to show that you are a friend.

The Labour MP Ann Cryer, who represents Keighley, West Yorkshire, which has a large Muslim community, feels strongly that the burka is too inhibiting not just for communication but also for carrying out practical tasks such as caring for small children and driving a car. It’s not appropriate for 21st-century life. It turns you from a participant to an observer in the community.

That doesn’t mean that Britain should ban the burka in public places. We don’t want the police stripping off women’s outer garments in the street. The French have gone too far by prohibiting the wearing of a full veil on public transport.

But we should make it clear that people should not be allowed to cover their faces when it impinges on others, That includes women working in schools, hospitals, courtrooms, shops and the service industries.

Women could wear the burka in private, when travelling and around their neighbourhood, but the law should send out a message that it is antisocial behaviour and that when women are paid to communicate with colleagues or the public they should be expected to take it off.

Tony Blair’s commitment to changing what is socially acceptable has had a lasting effect, as we saw from the Social Attitudes Survey, published yesterday. He has changed perceptions on gay marriage and adoption, maternity and paternity leave, domestic violence and smoking.

He could have done the same for burkas. Cherie Blair made it clear what she thought of them. “If you get to a stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because you can’t see her face, then you have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person in her own right,” she said.

Yet Mr Blair refused to debate the question. He feared the racism tag. The UK Independence Party has reinforced those fears by announcing that it wants to ban the burka. It immediately sounded racist as well as opportunistic, particularly as it also adds that Muslims are breeding too fast. This sounds like the BNP in blazers.

This shouldn’t be about race, religion — or even feminism. It’s about what is socially acceptable. And covering women’s faces was a medieval practice that should never have been resurrected.