... Even if it is Jack Straw. I applaud his comments and agree with them completely.

I fully support Muslim womens right to wear religious gear or whatever else they want. But a public ban should be placed on the full face mask that some Muslim women wear. For reasons of security mainly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5410472.stm

Considering how it's often considered illegal for anyone to cover their face in public unless situation warrents it (motorbike helmet, dealing with chemicals, in a cold climate) I don't see why Muslim women should be exempt from the law simply due to their religion...

I might as well claim it's my religious obligation to slaughter an animal every day at 1:00pm and call it targetting discrimination if someone tries to stop me.

If there is a law banning the covering of one's face without justification, then it's only fair to require that they comply.

You've got to live by the laws of the country you choose to live in. If you go to an Islamic country and it turns out that it is illegal to drink alcohol, then it's fair enough that you should not be allowed to drink it, even if you might declare that dark ales are a religious requirement for you. If you want to drink beer, you go live in a country that allows it.

Um - from my reading of that no-one is calling for a ban on them - he's only suggesting that it makes communication difficult. I agree with him on that. Banning it would lead to even less communication...

"I don't think it's the job for somebody who represents the whole community to say to somebody who comes through the door, 'Do you mind if you dress differently in order to talk to me?'," Mr Hughes said. My sentiments exactly...

@Harbs: When they make you give up alcohol, which is something you like but they disallow, and which is just putting a restriction on you. When you make them disobey religious regulations because of secular law, it's different.

However, it's not like islam absolutely requires all those burkhas. Show me the queen of Jordan in one.

I will tell you (plural you, not the singular Harbs ;) ) in all honesty that, while I'm actually quite the fan of exotic travels, exotic cultures, history, whatever, and I don't mind tourists or individual immigrants either, I felt somehow endangered the last time I visited the richer parts of Europe (and generally closer to the former colonial metropolies) and saw a lot of burkhas all around me, some turbans and banners in Arabic. Wonder when we're going to have street signs in Arabic in Western Europe.

Now you can roll your eyes at my fear of us all being islamicised etc etc, but just see what kind of reaction you get if you step on the wrong toe when dealing with Islam and many of the Muslim people. Just recall those idiotic satirical drawings of Muhammad in Danish press and what happened later. Those people are not lambs by far.

Perhaps it's the price the West pays for colonialism.

Are you off your rocker Barmy? Jack Straw? If he had bollocks he would be standing up to the US not vunerable minorities.

Ken Livingstone is someone that I would admire.

Chev, I can only speak for N.Ireland, but we have tons of Arabs and Pakistanis and there are no street signs in Urdu or Arabic. The big advantage we have is that we don't allow foreigners to have their own areas as we have learned by our mistakes of dividing districts into Catholic/Protestant estates... Muslims seem to get on well with the beer drinking/pork eating locals.

Harbs/Gnarf - there are no laws in the UK regarding the wearing of headscarves. No-one has a problem with Ultra Orthodox Jews dress sense so why should we have a problem with Muslim women's headscarves?

But it's also quite dangerous. When there's somebody who has all their features covered up, you don't have a clue who you're talking to. Just like chavs wearing hoodies and caps are asked to remove them. Any situation in public where a person covers up their face are frowned upon. Why should Muslims be treated differently?

The best way to tackle the problem would be to abolish faith schools. Most Muslim women in the UK don't cover up so keeping them away from a strict Islamic enviroment (such as faith schools) will lessen the number of ninjas (as we call fully covered women). If N.Ireland had abolished faith schools decades ago, things would have been very different.

@Cúchulainn: Yeah, another thing we don't have here yet. We have a several centuries old Muslim minority, but you won't tell those folks in the crowd. The self-formed ghettos are scary. It's one thing when they are being reached to in their own language (and generally communication "code") to help them integrate, but it's completely different when islands form.

From a security point of view, I understand this, but he was complaining because it serves to mark them as seperate. If anything, I encourage this. We are different and people need to accept that John Allen Muhamed over there doesn't do things the same way you do. We should mark ourselves as seperate in areas that matter to us. I frequently wear christian paraphenalia, not because I want to cause trouble, or even directly because I want to start a discussion, though such are nice, but because I want everyone to know what I stand for. I have no problem with muslims wearing face-coverings, or jews wearing those hat things (can't think of their name atm), or gays wearing gay-pride stuff. I like to know where people stand on an issue. I may not agree with them, but they should feel perfectly comfortable marking themselves as different.

At the same time, I also have no problem with him asking, ASKING, that they do remove the coverings. That's his perogative.

The problem is that Muslim people aren't living in the UK with us, the majority, white and C of E, they are living in their own little country inside of our country, there is barely any integration, and all of their kids are going to Muslim schools.

On a smaller scale, it wouldn't really matter, but because there are so many Muslims here, there must be proper integration, and these faith schools have to go if we are all to live together, because if nothing changes, there will be enormous race riots within out major cities. It really is a crisis issue in this country, hate is brewing big time between muslims and non-muslims, and things have to change.

Last time I was in London, I seen many white men with Pakistani girlfriends, like it was almost a legal requirement so I think the majority are quite integrated. True there are areas where you almost doubt that you are still in the UK, but I think its nice, and you are made to feel welcome. Thats probably one of the main reasons why I like the south of England - because there is so much variety.

If you look at the average woman in the UK, you will notice that very few of them wear any type of burka or headscarf. Around Belfast its mostly Malysian woman that wear headscarves, not the Pakistanis, Indians, Turks or Arabs, but then again its no big deal.

How could you tell they were Pakistani? Why not from India, Bangladesh or the Punjab?

I agree that the only lass I know who wears the headscarf is Malaysian.

I agree with him. And those radical Muslims are inclined to anger at every little thing which doesn't support them. They think everybody is trying to steal their religion from them. And there are some women with face coverings here in Turkey and it is disturbing. Even there can be a male murderer under this thing!

And another interesting thing: some of my friends say they saw women with face coverings in a beach. Then these women took out their wearing and started to swim with bikini! But that is another topic.

We in little old Danmark (us with the drawings) had a problem with burkas, in the wake of all this muhammed stuff (and i cant stress how far this was blown out), some officials tried to be ekstra nice to muslims, so in airport checks etc, muslim women where not required to remove thier burka. which is just stupid.

Secondly we have a law which forbid face-covering public, unless needed, as with biker helms.
I asume the police and state let the muslims keep them on not to cause trouble, but imho it seems wrong that you can bypass a law with religous reasons.
I dont mind people wearing religius symbols or that stuff. but being allowed to break a law do to religion seems a bit over the top.

I met more Pakistanis so I am assuming they are in the majority (in regards to Asian Muslims). Its easy to tell the difference between Sikhs and Muslims.

Argohir - I have a similar story to yours. A friend in Turkey said she seen an Iranian woman completely covered head-to-toe buying sexy lingerie!

Funny link

http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/111997.html

Last time I was in London, I seen many white men with Pakistani girlfriends, like it was almost a legal requirement so I think the majority are quite integrated.I don't know where you've been going, but I live in Birmingham, and I've never seen an asian/white couple in my life, and I spend every day in the city centre. Trust me when I tell you that the majority are not quite integrated at all. Have you seen the news lately? It's an issue every politician is taking about.

I met more Pakistanis so I am assuming they are in the majority (in regards to Asian Muslims). Its easy to tell the difference between Sikhs and Muslims. I admit that my experience is limited to girls I met at University in London, and their friends (also from around London, mostly Slough) - plus more recent work-colleagues. However they are/were a mixed collection of Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and, although all born in England, would trace their routes back to one of the aforementioned countries. I had absolutely no way of telling what country or what religion they were from just by looking at them.

Intergration wise it is a bit difficult to describe. There is no doubt they have a different culture, differing goals, different taste in music (Bangra is terrible imo). But I've found this to be the case (to differing degrees) with almost every group of different nationalities - be them French, German or Chinese. However, I was always made to feel welcome in their sense of "normal" and they never had an problem joining my sense of "normal". However, neither of us would want to live the other way and nor should we have to.

Actually, the English are propbably worse than anyone else. If you look at the situation in France and Spain, or further afield in the UAE and Dubai, the English (as a whole) make very little effort to even learn the language, never mind intergrating into the local culture.

I think the issue is that too often, people stick with what they know and therefore don't get to mingle with other cultures. In England, people from a non-english culture can feel unwelcome, ostracised and out of their depth if they try and just "join in" which puts them off doing it in future. I've found it best to experience other peoples cultures if you want them to join in yours. It's amazing how much fun you can have trying to sing Cantonese Kareoke on a drunken New Years evening, and would hope they had as much fun joining in our party.

Sarevok is spot on here to be honest. The majority of Muslims don't seem interested in integrating. You have areas that are completely Muslim, including schools, shops and housing. Complete square blocks where you will not see anyone white. I'm not saying they are all like it, but a lot of them like to create their own little neighbourhoods and keep to themselves.

But then again you see British people doing that abroad and no-one raised an eyebrow.

But then again you see British people doing that abroad and no-one raised an eyebrow. Spot on.

Speaking of having "signs in arabic" and all that, has anyone been to Barcelona recently? I got lost in the eastern part of the city last time I was there. I could have sworn I'd been magically transported to England.

It's a typically British thing really. We're allowed to go everywhere else in the world and convert it into a small annex of Britain, and no one has a right to complain. And everyone coming into Britain must do exactly what we tell them to. Arrogance maybe?

The majority of Muslims don't seem interested in integrating Why does everyone keep jumping on the Muslim bandwagon? No one who isn't white integrates anywhere in Europe (or at least in the UK, France, Belgium and Spain). I live in university accomodation where about half the residents are Chinese. We could be having a get-togethe with a dozen people, half of which don't speak Chinese, and the other half will happily ignore everyone else and speak exclusively in Chinese. If you try to engage in conversation with them they will ignore you. They go to Chinese shops, from which they buy their own chinese goods (and I'm not talking about food here - they buy things that you can get in just about any shop), speak exclusively Mandarin (and if you don't speak their language they'll just ignore you), and yet no one ever seems to complain about them not being integrated. Yet everyone will keep on attacking muslims and demanding they abolish their cultural identity because they're not "integrated", Straw will say some hot words about the topic that will encourage a bunch of hooligans to walk into a mosque and beat a man in there, which will promptly be followed by some idiot from Scotland Yard claiming that "portraying the Asian community as victims is unacceptable"...

Oh yes, and then you get British Airways deciding to fire one of their employees because she was wearing a cross (you know, because otherwise it would be "discrimination"... but if you discriminate against everyone then you're fine!). Granted the woman's nuts (for reasons that have nothing to do with her religious belief), but why do people care? The best way to make sure no one ever gets along with anyone else is to strip them all of their cultural identity. Just leave them to wear whatever they want and be done with it. Jack Straw would be far better doing something about racial crime (800+ in Edinburgh alone in 2006, and that was back in August. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get to >1000 by the end of the year) than pouring more fuel into that fire.

Are you trying to claim that Muslims / Asians are not the majority in this group we're talking about?

People talk about Muslims and 'jump on the bandwagon' because they're the group that get shoved in peoples faces every day through the media and other sources. That's where the tension comes from in this country. When was the last time you heard of a Chinese university student hijacking a plane or planting a bomb on tube? It's pretty obvious to see where it all stems from.