According to Sara Khan, the government’s chief adviser on extremism, the language used by Boris Johnson to describe Muslim women, in an article, was “demeaning” and “dehumanising”. My distaste for our prime minister knows no bounds, but his comments - that Muslim women wearing burqas looked like “bank robbers” and “letterboxes” - seemed relatively mild, especially given the fact that he was repudiating, not advocating, a ban on burquas. The word “dehumanising” might more accurately describe the requirement for Muslim women to cover themselves in swathes of cloth: a collective act of cultural and religious self-erasure.
We seem to have reached the point where any criticism of Islam - no matter how mild or measured - is automatically assumed to be ‘Islamophobic’. Any concern about the tenets of Islam is deemed to be “bigoted” or “prejudiced”, precluding the possibility that Islam might indeed have a case to answer. Our freedom of religion - a freedom we curate with exaggerated care, and which allows Muslims, Christians and others to worship god in whatever way they see fit - is, ironically, a freedom prohibited by both the Koran and the Bible.
Licensed last week: a steam loco on the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway...
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