BRENDAN O’NEILL: WHO’S REALLY RACIST — BORIS JOHNSON OR HIS CRITICS?

Media outlets play their role in shushing any conversation about the repressive culture that exists in some Muslim communities. The BBC and others always wheel on university-educated niqab-wearers who gaily explain that they love their face-blocking veils and in fact view them as feminist garments since they prevent men from ogling the women underneath. So it’s all fine, then. These garments are great. Even empowering. Anyone who believes this is the whole story is kidding themselves, and they know they are. They know that the majority of women who wear these garments didn’t go to Oxford and will never appear on the BBC and instead live in communities, or at least households, in which women are considered second-class citizens and so intensely the property of their husbands that only he may see their face and hair. If another community was treating women like this, there would be uproar. But when it is the Muslim community our feministic elites turn away. ‘The burqa’s great. It is part of their culture. Shut up.’

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