The veil debate - honesty would help.

A problem can never be solved without the essential first step being taken – identify the cause of the problem accurately & honestly. Something that's always interested me, not to say frustrated and angered me, is the inability or refusal of people to do that.

I’m intrigued by the expanding debate over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear the veil. It's another perfect example of the crux of a problem being neither acknowledged nor addressed.

Sadly that rarely happens, which means not only that problems are not solved but also that they become worse to the point of crisis and very often violence.

This current furore over some Muslim women wearing the veil is a good example. It’s reached the point of hysteria in the UK, and inevitably the lunatic fringe, for and against, is out in force, ignoring and distorting the facts to push extreme agendas.

That's what happens if a problem isn't identified, then solved quickly. It starts to reach crisis point, and that's when the violence kicks in. Already the Daily Telegraph has reported a woman in the UK having her veil ripped off.

Distorted facts.

An example in the UK of the facts being distorted. There’s been huge publicity over the teacher at the centre of the storm, Aishah Azmi, teaching her class while wearing the veil, with huge criticism about the stupidity of such action. The fact is that she was not wearing the veil while teaching, she wore it only when in the company of adult male colleagues. That fact is not in dispute but is ignored by those pushing their own agenda. And of course those who are against the veil jump on the lie and spread it as a fact.

Communication impossible.

Secondly, the claim is being made that it is difficult or impossible to communicate with someone unless their face can be seen. This is no more than an excuse for the anti-veil forces, a red herring. It has nothing to do with the real reason they want the veil banned. It is both untrue and ludicrous.

Ludicrous? The examples that prove it is so are endless. We all communicate perfectly well every day with people we can’t see, on the telephone, from brief personal messages to highly complex business conversations. We understand perfectly what we hear on the radio. Pilots with air traffic control and base-to-patrol for emergency services or taxis communicate perfectly well through radio sound only.

David Blunkett was born blind yet has been an MP since 1987 and rose to several Ministerial positions. He has never been able to see the people he’s talking with, can’t see other MPs in the hurly-burly of the House of Commons, yet obviously can understand perfectly well what’s being said to him.

I watched the press conference held by Aishah Azmi. She was totally covered, sitting very still at a table. Yet all the assembled media understood every word she said. Not once was she asked to repeat or explain anything she said. I watched on television and I also understood every word she said.

A moment’s intelligent thought demonstrates it is simply not true that we have to see people to be able to understand them.

Let’s be honest.

Let's treat the extremist rantings with the disdain they deserve and ignore them. Let's talk about the majority, the mainstream.

I’m in the middle of an e-mail exchange on the subject with a friend in Australia, where the same debate is arising. As part of his argument against the wearing of the veil he recounted the story of being pulled over by a policeman and asked to produce his driving licence. He felt so intimidated and uncomfortable because the cop was wearing dark sunglasses which hid his eyes that my friend asked him to remove the glasses. He needed to see the cop’s full face, felt fearful because he couldn’t.

I have no problem talking to people wearing shades and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. But others obviously feel intimidated, even frightened, by them. The same obviously is true with women covering their face with a veil, some, perhaps many, people not used to it are intimidated or frightened by it.

The MP who started the debate in the UK, Jack Straw, said that he asked constituents wearing the veil when visiting his office to remove it. His reason? He told the BBC: “I just find it uncomfortable if I’m trying to have a conversation with someone whose face I can’t see.”

It’s no accident that SWAT teams, Tactical Response Groups, are dressed in black from head to foot, face covered by a balaklava, only the eyes visible. It’s deliberately intimidating.

A woman wearing the veil is also a figure covered from head to foot in black, face covered, only the eyes visible. A frightening sight to some.

And there’s the crux of the problem. Not that a woman is wearing a veil but that other people are frightened by the sight of her.

The strongest human emotion, fear; fear of the unknown fear of the unfamiliar, fear of anything different.

So the answer is perhaps less that the few women wearing the veil should be barred from doing so, but more that the people frightened by it need to be educated that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Note: This is not a comment for or against the veil. It is a comment about the refusal of people to acknowledge the real causes of problems.