There's Nothing Liberal about Banning Symbols

Strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, frequently described as feminist and republican, the author Joan Smith, writing in The Independent today, does not come across as someone who would naturally have sympathy with UKIP’s burka ban policy.

However, Joan Smith acknowledges that the burka ‘limits women’s contact with non-relatives and maintains barriers between people who have different ethnic and religious backgrounds’ and that the garment signals a woman’s ‘deliberate separation from people unlike herself’. Smith points out that regardless of the woman's motive, whether it be family pressure, religious belief or political statement, the meaning of the burka remains the same: ‘separation, rejection, an acceptance of shame’. Thus she neatly concludes ‘wearing it in the 21st-century is preposterous’ but she concedes she would never support a ban.

A fellow feminist, who I believe would be more likely to support the ban is the Swiss, best-selling author of psychology books Julia Onken. Onken’s last minute email campaign was vital in swaying the vote of the recent Swiss referendum which banned the building of any further minarets in Switzerland. For Onken ‘the minarets are masculine symbols of power’. This has nothing to do with the minarets themselves but what they connote: a religion whose fundamentalist strands suppress women’s freedoms.

Many Swiss nationals were persuaded; the building of any future minarets was not voted against because they are an eye-sore, but because they represent a religion which has led to a perceived breakdown in social cohesion. Voting for the ban was making a statement.

If you overlook the genuine Islamophobes and racists, the desire of the Swiss people to ban minarets is very similar to the desire of UKIP’s leadership to ban burkas. Onken viewed the minarets as a symbol of Islamic patriarchy and this is just how Smith and Farage view the burka. Mr Farage said himself on The Politics Show that it is a ‘symbol of something that is used to oppress women’. Like the Swiss and minarets, Farage also views the burka as a symbol of the breakdown of social cohesion.

Mr Farage’s argument leads us into dangerous territory. Take the minaret example: Julia Onken attacked them because she saw no other way of expressing her views about extreme Islam. Surely It must be asked: why stop at minarets? By her own logic, if she had the chance, Onken would want to ban all the Islamic symbols in an attack on the religion's patriarchal nature, why not ban mosques, the Koran etc. And the exact same could be said of Farage’s line of argument. Why pick just the burka? Surely Mosques should be banned as they are spreading the doctrine of patriarchy and seclusion which he detests so much.

As any liberal will tell you tolerance and pluralism are the keystones to a free society. As Evlyn Beatrice Hall attributed Voltaire with writing: 'I detest what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. You might hate what is being worn but that gives you no right to ban it. If we believe the burka is inappropriate because it goes against our traditional British cultural values then so too must we ban that which is worn by Punks and Goths or the short skirts which our grandparents would of been shocked by in the 1950s.


Yes, let's encourage British culture in society, but forcing people to take part by restricting their liberty connotes fascist ideology (no surprise at all we're being linked with the BNP). Our Party would do well to concentrate on serious policy proposals in the regions of Foreign Affairs and Terrorism Legislation to deal with the real threats of Islamic extremism.