OK, I know I'm about to wade in where angels fear to tread but those of you that know me knew that I would, didn't you? One of my biggest problems in life is that I just can't keep my mouth shut, especially where issues of justice and fairness are concerned. This week we are observing Holocaust Memorial Day, a very important jolt to the senses every year, I always think, and never more so than today, which is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Russians. Those of you that read my 'Wilcommen, Bienvenue, Welcome' blog some months ago will know how moved we all were by out trip to Auschwitz in December 2007. I defy anyone to go there and not think 'there but the grace of God'.
As a history student in the days before colour television was invented [only joking!], I found myself forever pondering how one of the most civilised and cultured nations could have acquiesed to such a load of racist bunkum. We cannot lay the blame on the Wagnerian images of blond, Aryan, blue eyed and supernatural beings of German mythology. No, the road to 'The Final Solution to the Jewish Question' was perpetrated in little more than an hour by Reinhard Heydrich and his fellow Nazi and SS leaders at the Wannsee Conference, held on the outskirts of Berlin, in 1942. Certainly, many horrific atrocities preceded this event but it was only in 1942 that one of the greatest crimes against humanity was validated.
In between the first performance of 'Das Rheingold' in Munich on September 22nd 1869, the prologue to Wagner's vast operatic trilogy, 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', and the Wannsee Conference on January 20th 1942, there was a constant 'drip, drip' of anti-Semitism. It is easy to see with hindsight how miniscule, unattributed stabs gradually cut away at the very fabric that bound German society together. The cuts became tears, and then slashes, until eventually whole swathes of the German population had been torn completely into redundant and disposable pieces. It was not long before the exercise was repeated throughout the rest of Europe. How could it have happened? The question is as pertinent today as it ever was.
But it could not possibly happen again, I hear you say, and please God, you are right. Carly Whyborn, chief executive officer of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said this week,"Britain is not Nazi Germany in the 1930's. It is not Pol Pot's Cambodia. But on Holocaust Memorial Day we can pause to look at how we treat those around us. We can all make the choice to challenge exclusion when we see it happening - we can choose to stop using language that dehumanises others and we can stop our friends and family from dehumanising and excluding others." Martin Stern, a Dutch survivor of Theresienstadt, says, "we won't solve the problem by UN resolutions on genocide. The only hope is that in the future every child in the world should be educated to immunise it against the tendency to hate others and to regard others as inferior."
Yet in the same week that we publicly remind ourselves of the lessons from our immediate history, France decides to recommend a total ban on Muslim women wearing the niqab, the full veil, in public places. I may be missing something but, as I understand it, the percentage of women donning such attractive and enticing attire is less than 0.1% of France's total Muslim population. I mean, after all, how many women would voluntarily opt for such incarceration. I may be opening myself to a massive deluge of hate mail but, really, it strikes me that the bulk of these women who say that it is their choice are educated, smart, sassy women, with a chip on their shoulder and the Islamic equivalent of two fingers up to Sarkozy's all -controlling state. Just who is the proponent of free and unfettered choice here?
The niqab is a cultural relic from the middle east. Saudi Arabia, with its Wahabi brand of extreme and anti feminist Islam, is the great perpetrator of such illiberal dress codes. Women do not have a choice there about not wearing it, any more than women in France will soon have a choice about whether they can choose to wear it and keep their jobs or claim their benefits. The big difference is that Saudi women have no choice and are therefore no real threat to the social order. French women do have a choice and, as a consequence, are seen to threaten the status quo. These women, many it has to be said, who are converts, flaunt their veils voluntarily, and that is their crime. Historically, none of us really cared about the veil when women were kept quiet behind closed doors, least of all the likes of men obsessed with beautiful and alluring women, like Nicolas Sarkozy.
Why is it always the women who are made the scapegoats in these power games? And now, as if some great practical joke has been played on the women of Afghanistan, Gordon Brown and Hamid Karzai are talking about making deals with deeply dodgy members of the Taliban, with appalling human rights records, and bringing them into the so-called democratic political process. It beggars belief. We pussyfoot around, making daft and wildly inaccurate speculation about the chosen attire of women in our own privileged communities, whilst we sell out our sisters to help exit a war we never wanted in the first place. With the Taliban back in town, the genie has sure as hell been let out of the bottle now. My heart goes out to the women of that beautiful and beleaguered country.
My own views on the veil are somewhat coloured by my education at the hands of Ursuline nuns. They had a very nice line in wimples, and there is not, as far as I can see, very much difference. They were certainly de-sexualised, permanently, as it happens, because of their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Not much difference there then. In fact, the headmistress of my school, a six footer in stockinged feet, called Sister Philip, bore a striking resemblance to the late, great Peter Cook in 'Bedazzled'. When you have grown up with women clad from head to toe in black, you do not fear them in the least. In all truthfulness, I can't say that the issue of what women wear, however long or short, high-necked or low cut, black or white has ever really bothered me in the slightest. Surely, after all, that is one of the privileges of living in a free society? Whilst I would not relish my daughter adopting the tattoos and piercings of a Goth, I don't honestly think that it would justify throwing her out of the house.
With my own children I have always worked on the principle that if you say, "Yes, Darling, you look wonderful," and try your very best not to show any emotion in your face, as your eyes widen to the size of saucers, they usually tire of the desire to shock. Often, I found, threatening to adopt a fashion vaguely similar did the trick, particularly when tattoos were being considered. My big fear for the young women of France is that this very cowardly and silly recommendation will encourage droves of young Muslim women to make a stand. It would not be unreasonable, after all, to stand up for one's rights. We've all done it when we've felt we've been cornered. It's a natural human response. When I was young I did things that I'm now ashamed of, purely out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Why do we suppose young Muslim women are any different?
But, I guess, that's the real point. We do think that they are different. We do, somehow, and by proxy, think that we know what's best for them. We think that they are a threat to the very foundation of our liberal state. We think that it is the stuff of nightmares, the beginning of the rolling back of everything that we hold most dear. They, I suspect, think they are the height of edgy chic, the Islamic equivalent of punk or grunge. They strut their stuff with pride, especially on the smartest shopping streets in Paris and London. It identifies and radicalises them. It gives their lives meaning. It empowers them rather than subjugates them. In short, their niqabs are the very antithesis of everything we believe them to be.
I have listened to smart, young, giggling girls, swathed in black from head to toe, in Whiteley's or Selfridge's, and I promise you their conversation is the chat of all young women. I am sure that the same conversations are heard by other women every day in Lafayette and Bon Marche. "Shall I take the red or the black?" is a question about shoes, not cables. They are not a threat to us. I have no doubt that they are much more of a threat to their potentially militant brothers. They have made a choice, and they are proud of it. We should leave them be. We should stop this 'drip, drip' of cultural superiority right now and concentrate on the lessons of Holocaust Memorial Day. We owe it to our children.
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