THE GUARDIAN

  LEADER

Leader
Tuesday October 17, 2006

Sticks and stones do break bones but words can hurt too. Just a week after Jack Straw's remarks about the niqab, a clamour now arises from politicians joining the debate with their own concerns about Islam. Where Mr Straw was precise and careful with his language, the risk is that anxiety is being aired without clarity either as to the problems or the solutions.

Few Muslims feel comfortable about becoming the chief political preoccupation of the day, but that is how many will feel that they are seen after the past week. Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell all went out of their way to give vocal support to Mr Straw's original comments, giving the impression that the government attaches disproportionate importance to the veil. Yesterday's trumpeted plans to map out extremist Islamic hotspots came alongside the announcement of reforms to the admission rules for religious schools that ministers must have known would be seen primarily in the context of Islam. This followed a weekend where minister Phil Woolas demanded a teaching assistant be "sacked" for wearing a veil at work, second-guessing an employment tribunal that must decide on whether or not her dress is hampering her work, where the facts seem to be disputed. Tory home affairs spokesman David Davis has piled in too, warning that British Muslims risked falling into "voluntary apartheid". Perhaps afraid of being called racist, the Conservatives had said little on these issues, but now Labour has given them cover.

Taken singly, many of these might be reasonable interventions; others, like Mr Woolas's remarks, are just unconstructive. But viewed together - especially through the distorting lens of tabloid coverage - they can easily seem to imply a general problem with the Muslim community en bloc. That impression is unfair. Issues are distinct, and apply to relatively small numbers of people. Politicians would do well to untangle and tackle problems separately.

The first is not with Muslims themselves, but with non-Muslim Britons: the problem of Islamaphobia. The Guardian's recent poll showed, encouragingly, that this is not as widespread as feared, but it does exist and needs to be faced. Over recent days the background noise may have exacerbated it. Last week one woman was reportedly forcibly unveiled, and, as Zaiba Malik's reports in G2 today, wearing the niqab for just one day in London is sufficient to run into hostility. A second concern is the development of parallel communities, whose lack of contact damages wider society. Mr Straw argued the niqab contributed to this problem, and it may. But it is far from the only cause, with the poverty of some Muslim communities being a big barrier. Even if the niqab is felt to be a problem, we should be mindful of those women unkindly caught between the two millstones of cultural pressure at home and public hostility in the street.

Finally, there is the security risk posed by a very small number of dangerous individuals. Care is needed in how we link these people to Islam. Even Ms Kelly's suggestion that the problem is restricted to Islamic extremists is wide of the mark. Many whose commitment to Islam is fervent, even extreme - as monks, nuns and Ms Kelly herself are extremely committed to Christianity - nonetheless reject violence. In contrast to the IRA, which a broad Republican community gave tacit cover to through its years of violence, the handful of Islamist terrorists in the UK are not knowingly being protected by Muslims as a whole. Rather, Islamist terrorists are criminals and overwhelmingly seen as such by their co-religionists. But talk which leaves Muslims feeling adrift from mainstream Britain may encourage the very alienation it deplores. Politicians must be free to speak their minds. Honesty can help. But they should choose their words and timing carefully, or they will only fan the flames.

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