I have just come across the following info in an Associated Press article
[Comments] by Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary who now is leader of the House of Commons, [have] plunged Britain into a debate over Islamic integration.
Straw said in a newspaper column published Thursday that he believes the veils favored by some Muslim women inhibit communication and are a sign of division in society. At his constituency office, Straw said he asks that veiled women reveal their faces, adding that the women have always complied, and a female assistant is always present.
On Friday, British media quoted Straw as going further, saying that he would prefer that Muslim women not wear veils at all. "I just find it uncomfortable if I'm trying to have a conversation with someone whose face I can't see," Straw told the BBC.
I am not at all a fan of religious rituals, but neither am I a fan of western male arrogance. Straw is not arguing that the women are forced to wear veils against their will (he says "favored by some Muslim women"). He is arguing that they should defer to his taste for seeing the faces of the people he is talking to. But, in fact, they are visiting him as his constituents in his district office. He is the one who should be deferential to them (or is that too much of an American idea of representatives being the servants of the people). Why can he not look into the women's eyes and speak to them? Perhaps it is too important to him as a politician and manipulator of people to see how they respond to his words (and the theater of his body and facial language). Is he worried their lips are curling up in a snicker or down in disappointment that his political language is fluffy and misleading? This little vignette of Mr. Straw's displeasure wonderfully exposes the byplay in political language: that it is not the content of what is being said but rather the reading of people's emotional responses for clues to appropriate theatrical tricks that is important to a politician. That there are so many books teaching us to "read" people suggests that today content is less important than the subtleties of non-verbal persauasion.
I suggest that politicians (male as well as female) don veils so that we are more likely to pay attention to the content of their words rather than their toothy smiles and the false sincerity got up by square jaws and paternal wrinkles more likely acquired at late night cocktail parties than sleeplessness over the wars, poverty and environmental destruction for which they are responsible.
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