Bill Rammell is the latest British government minister to get his niqabs in a twist, endorsing the idea of banning veils in university lecture halls and labs.
The higher education minister has surely better things to talk about, as Paul Mackney, the joint general secretary of the University and College Union pointed out:
For years people said that Muslim families won't let their women go to university. Now there are more Muslim women at university people are telling them what to wear. This is not something which is applied to any other group. This is not likely to make Muslim women feel welcome in higher education. Why is all this attention being paid to the dress of probably the poorest and most vulnerable section of the population?
More sinister is the amount of interest shown by virulently anti-Muslim and, frankly, racist blogs (no, we're not going to link to them) in the comments made by Rammell in a story on EducationGuardian.co.uk yesterday. He also touched on the subject last month.
But isn't this getting too absurd? How many veiled students are there in UK universities? The hijab is now common enough not to excite comment - which is surely a good thing. We'd love to hear from any student who wears the niqab and her experience.
