Daily Times

Boris Johnson has outdone himself. yet again. for the old Etonian has got carried away as he once more lets rip in Britain’s Daily Telegraph; a broadsheet unaffectionately referred to as the ‘Torygraph’ on account of its right-wing slant. His latest offering serves as another unabashed bid for the party leadership; this time appropriating the question of the burqa and niqab. Or, as he eloquently puts it, those “odd bits of headgear” worn by a tiny minority of British Muslim women. And just to prove that one truly cannot put a price on the country’s upper crust public school system — the man who as recently as last month represented the United Kingdom on the world stage went on to compare the appearance of veiled women to letterboxes and bank robbers. Well, then.

Prime Minister Theresa May has called on the former Foreign secretary to apologise. Baroness Warsi has rightly taken him to task over his Islamophobic opportunism; which, true to script, plays out on the man-made battlefields of women’s bodies. The Telegraph column was set-up to showcase his supposed liberal credentials. For after the insults appeared the punchline: Bo Jo stands firm against an all-out burqa and niqab ban in England’s green and, at times, unpleasant land. None of which fails to distract from the fact such deliberately contemptuous language comes just four months after the country was swamped with calls to observe “Punish a Muslim Day”.

Thus the time is ripe for May to do what she should have done last year when the bumbling and inept Mr Johnson committed a momentous blunder — before a parliamentary committee, no less. That debacle saw him carelessly and erroneously describe a British-Iranian woman as being in Tehran to train journalists; thereby resulting in the latter facing increased incarceration. Admittedly, if the premier were to do the needful she might open herself up to similar charges of exploiting Islamophobia for professional gain; to dump by the wayside the man who has been the thorn in her political side ever since her predecessor did a runner after the disastrous Brexit vote.

Nevertheless, the PM could likely silence critics if she moved the goal posts to frame this peculiar type of Islamophobia as a feminist issue, which it absolutely is. For, bluntly put, there is something untoward about privileged and entitled white male toffs in positions of power expressing preference for what women of specific religious persuasion should and should not wear; all to serve a particular male gaze. Moreover, if May were to go down this path it would likely open the way for non-Muslim feminists and their allies to come out and support a minority community under fire without fear of presumed cultural barriers getting in the way. An added benefit might be the ushering in of nuanced changes to an anachronistic national dialogue. Thereby lifting the — ahem — veil on the contrived record of the opposition under Tony Blair’s leadership as well as certain quarters of the liberal press that did not need much persuasion to proclaim that the 7/7 attacks had rung the death knell on British multiculturalism.

The time has therefore come for all political parties across the great divide to adopt an inclusive and intersectional mandate. Without exception. And as for Boris, it is hoped that he will soon be on his bike.  *

Published in Daily Times, August 9^th 2018.