Britain’s liberal media lines up behind government’s anti-Muslim offensive

Last week Straw wrote a column in his local newspaper describing the Muslim niqab (or veil) as a “visible statement of separation” and stating that he asked constituents to remove it when they came to see him. The veil, he added, made him feel uncomfortable and was a barrier to social dialogue and cohesion.

There was no possible innocent explanation for Straw’s comments. A seasoned politician, he has acted as both home secretary and foreign secretary, in which role he presided over the ideological and diplomatic preparations for the Iraq war. Moreover, he made his remarks at a time when Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leading government spokesmen have repeatedly denounced Islamic fundamentalism as the major threat to western liberal values in order to justify their actions in the Middle East and encroachments on civil liberties at home.

Straw’s statements on the veil were his contribution towards whipping up anti-Muslim prejudice and staking out his position in Labour’s forthcoming leadership contest. Only weeks before Straw had written an article for the New Statesman on the right wing Labourite Anthony Crosland that made clear his attack on the veil was bound up with this broader political agenda. In it he wrote that, “The 11 September attacks and what has followed have also had the effect of exposing differences based on religion more acute than we have seen in two centuries or more. When Crosland was writing, the divisions he saw in society were ones of class; now they are principally ones of religion.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/strw-o14.shtml