Leicester prides itself as being a tolerant city in which people from many different cultures live together in harmony. It is therefore disconcerting to see the findings of a study which reveals that Muslim women wearing face veils routinely encounter hostility and abuse.
The study was conducted by two criminology lecturers at the University of Leicester and involved interviews with more than 100 Leicester-based Muslim women over a 12-month period, as we reported yesterday. One participant told the Mercury: “People feel free to have a pop at us every day. They swear, stare, spit and tell us to go home. They call us terrorists.”
One of the authors wore a face veil – known as a niqab – for a month to understand what her interviewees experienced. “Attitudes to me changed over night,” she said. “People were abusive and threatening.”
There is a lot of public discussion about the face veil. Some people dislike the practice and feel that it is a barrier to proper communication and that it does not help integration. They question its religious basis and raise concerns that it is a means of subjugating women.
These are not views we share. What people wear is a matter of personal choice, and it is a choice which some Muslim women actively make. It is regrettable that France has chosen to ban face veils in public and even more so that this law has been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.
It seems to us that dictating what people can wear is a clear infringement of civil liberties.
However, there is obviously a world of difference between a legitimate public discussion around face veils, and the behaviour of people who hurl abuse at women wearing them. These are just the spiteful actions of mindless idiots and there can be no justification whatsoever for them.
Leicestershire police have recorded just 11 instances of religiously-based abuse aimed at women in the past year, which suggests that this problem is hugely under-reported.
We would encourage victims to report all such incidents so that they can be investigated and the perpetrators brought to book wherever possible.
This sort of abuse is a crime and it has no place in our city. It must be stamped out.
Read more at http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Mercury-opinion-Face-veil-harassment-horrifying/story-21346562-detail/story.html#RoYukJxR7qybMQyR.99