Keeping Up Appearances

Recently, the leader of Britain's House of Commons, Jack Straw, created a firestorm when he revealed that he wants Muslim women to remove their veils when they do business with his office. "Most I ask seem relieved I have done so," he said. "Last Friday was a case in point. The veil came off almost as soon as I opened my mouth. I dealt with the problems the lady had brought to me. We then had a really interesting debate about veil wearing. This itself contained some surprises. It became absolutely clear to me that the husband had played no part in her decision. She explained she had read some books and thought about the issue. She felt more comfortable wearing the veil when out. People bothered her less." Despite the woman's assertions, Straw concluded that the veil is "such a visible statement of separation and of difference" that it hinders not just "face-to-face" encounters but the very possibility of "positive relations between the two communities."

To my American ear, it seems boorish of Straw to use his public power to chat up the clients about perceived wardrobe mistakes. Yet since 9/11, even if most politicians would think twice before asking nuns to doff those wimples or Hasidic Jews to drop in at Brooks Brothers and get with the times, they do seem to have fewer inhibitions about projecting "terror" onto veils and turbans and hijabs and burqas.

Straw's stance made me think of Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Corps. Patel, an American Muslim, tells the story of having been a guest speaker at Berea College, a Christian institution in Kentucky. A faculty member asked if he would like them to cover the cross when he spoke in the school chapel. Patel declined, demurring that it was precisely the Christian principle of inclusive fellowship symbolized by the cross that had inspired the invitation that had brought him there. On one level, the little interchange between Patel and Berea was unremarkable. It was a kind of mutual bow, a polite deflection from one religious tradition to another and back again. The essence of civility. From another perspective, however, it stood out as a rare moment of diplomacy in the freighted fan dance of hiding and exposing Muslim signifiers and Christian symbols.

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