The veil question which has been raised in the media this week is a strange one for me to consider as someone who often finds himself wearing a form of religious dress in Great Western Road and elsewhere. It seems to me that people should be able to wear what they like in public. Mind you, I know that if I wear a dog collar in the street I will be treated differently from the times when I don’t wear one and not always kindly.
However, even though I think people should be able to wear what they like on the streets, I think that the recent employment tribunal was correct in concluding that a school was not being unreasonable in expecting a teacher to go about school business with her face visible, even in the presence of a male colleague. It seems to me that for a school to have a member of staff veiling herself whenever a man appears, then children are likely to infer a set of cultural values from that act that society can legitimately question. But then I’m a dedicated secularist at heart. The idea of a common set of values inherited from the collected wisdom of the ages, whether from law, religions or the commonwealth of commonsense is an idea worth keeping alive, even when there are islamists and christianists who would challenge it relentlessly.
Is it odd that those who have a faint nostalgia for nuns in wimples never seem to be those who were educated by nuns in wimples?
Strange times for us secularists. Time for a song to keep our spirits up, I think – how about I ain’t afraid by Holly Near.
Join in the chorus now.
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