IPH (23rd March 2008)

Sunday 28th June 2009

Should Britain ban the burka? And: the death of Michael Jackson.

The burka — and other disguises

This week we had reports that the President of France has spoken about the wearing by some Muslim women of the burka (Times Online). News and crrent affairs TV shows took it up and the BBC1 Sunday morning TV discussion show The Big Questions (Series 2, Episode 23) had the theme: “Should Britain ban the burka?”

My view is very clear: not only is it, as Sarkozy says, a “debasement of women”; it is also a threat to national security: if a person is not allowed to enter a bank wearing a crash helmet, a person should be allowed to enter any building where CCTV cameras are in operation for security reasons wearing a burka. I wrote to my MP this morning, as follows.

The acceptance of people wearing the burka in public places is a terrorism threat.
 
Regarding this week's other hot topic (and no, I consider all Michael Jackson's work unpleasant to listen to and instantly forgettable) I agree with the President of France, although I am (very strongly) of the opinion that the wearing of the burka should be banned in public places for a quite different reason from his.
 
Although I agree with Monsieur Sarkozy that the full-body dress a “debasement of women”  --- as Question Time panellists agreed on Thursday, for the exactly opposite reason from that offered 45 years ago by the prudish for the daring fashions introduced in that era --- I also agree with those who say that to attempt to "dictate fashion" is out of the question for government.
 
No: the burka should be banned as part of anti-terrorist legislation; that is to say, it should not be mentioned by name; simply, there should be a ban against the wearing in all public places of any article, whether of clothing or "accessory", whether for motorcycling safety, "modesty", or "expression of their religion", that forms a disguise and prevents a person being recognized.
 
This should apply especially in all public places where there are CCTV cameras for reasons of public safety/security such as
  • banks and post offices,  shopping malls, shops and other places where large amounts of money are taken so that they could be the target of robbery
  • refreshment outlets and other places where large numbers of people gather, so that they could be the target of suicide bombers
  • bus and railway stations and airports, indeed any public transport nexus where a perpetrator might be intent on travelling to (or executing) a suicide bombing, travelling to or from any other criminal act, or indeed committing an act of smuggling, or where they might not wish to be observed and tracked by law enforcement and security agencies (including the border control, immigration and customs services) for any other reason
and so on.
 
The obvious exception is the use of crash helmets by motorcyclists etc; the regulations for (a) wearing such for protection when travelling at speed and (b) removing such when entering a bank are clear as things stand today; the rules for that should simply be extended to all items of apparel or otherwise that conceal a person's identity, and to all places where an unidentifiable figure could pose a threat, for the above (actually rather obvious) reasons. 
 
A less obvious exception would be the use of (say) clown's makeup. It would not be appropriate for the law I want to see to catch (by requiring the police to arrest) a street entertainer wearing greasepaint, which could be said to have a disguising effect. The way to cover this in law would be that if a disguise is difficult to remove, so that if a person wearing it was suspected of being a fugitive rather than a genuine entertainer, and the police gave chase, the person in question would be unable quickly to remove the disguise and vanish, because greasepaint takes quite a while to clean off, and also requires equipment (such as a cloth or cotton wool plus a solvent like cold cream or soap and water) to remove, and a fugitive could not change disguise while fleeing the scene. We are talking basically about crash helmets, tops with deep integral hoods inside which a face can be hidden, and Muslim veil garments like the burka, though "joke shop" masks of the sort apparently used by bank robbers would be cobvered as well in case perpetrators adopted this ploy as seen in various cops and robbers movies.
 
There has already been a case of a (male) Islamist terrorist (Yassim Omar) wearing a burka (that is, disguising himself as a female Muslim) to avoid capture; see Terrorist's burka-disguise fiancee jailed. The police might not be so fortunate as to capture the next one anyway. And, although it appears that the incidence of female islamist terrorists is orders of magnitude lower than (maybe only 1% of) the incidence of male islamist terrorists, the sex of the person is immaterial to the issue. It is the garment or other item as a form of disguise / identity concealment that is central to this.
 
The burka is only worn by a pecular, apparently self-selecting, and very small minority of Muslim women.  The majority of Muslims, including most imams and Muslim doctrinal scholars and other "authorities", appear to agree that no woman is obliged to cover up in this extreme way. Indeed, the origin of this practice (according to a scholar on BBC1 this Sunday morning at 10:00 when the topic was debated) predates the founding of Islam and was cultural rather than religious, and the vast majority of Muslim women don't have anything to do with it. Therefore it is not in any way a requirement of their religion.
 
There are other religions that have supposed rules about, or "expressions of their beliefs through" apparel or the lack of it, and they cannot follow their practices here. The Jain religion apparently requires its adherents to wear absolutely nothing. Can you imagine the effect if Jains starting walking around central London or our shopping malls wearing absolutely nothing?  No, claims by individuals that their religion requires them to dress in a certain way cannot be allowed to dictate what is acceptable in Britain, and certainly claims that people merely wish to express their personal take on religion through their dress cannot be allowed to dictate what is acceptable either.
 
I hope your party will move on this public security issue at the earliest opportunity.

Michael Jackson

Because of his sudden death not long before midnight British time on Thursday (25th June), there has been a sudden plethora of programmes about the man. The BBC had stuff on a special edition of Newsnight, then there were BBC1 (19:30..20:00), ITV (21:00..22:00), Channel 4 (22:00..23:00) and so on. Everybody from the oldies to the kids kept repeating how original he was, what a genius, how talented. OK so he seemed talented at writing songs, performing, creating a new "sound" and producing records and shows, not to mention being choreographer and dancing on stage and in his “videos” — he allegedly practiically invented the form.

But when I actually listened to the tracks theyplayed including “Thriller” about which everybody raved, I confirmed theview that I did not find the song, whether the words (which I could scarcely make out), the tune (which also I could scarcely discern), the “dancing” (a lot of jerky steps and ultramechanical head-turning) at all entertaining. I found the precision of the simultaneous moves of a troupe of dancers in makeup and disguises as zombies (or whatever they were supposed to be) reasonably impressive but apparently they had spent all of every day for a week learning and rehearsing the number before Jackson just turned up, stood in front of them and did the take (mind you, the veteran cinematographer told us the shooting of the video took another week).

In short, I would not willingly go anywhere to see a performance by this man, still less would I go anywhere to watch a video of a performance of his or even sit still and wtch one for more than 20 seconds before turning it off. His work did and does nothing whatever for me.

Turning to a supposedly totally different genre, Andrew Marr had on his 09:00 show this morning a Cuban who is currently a star of the Royal Ballet, where he has apparently been working for 11 years now and is considered the equal of Nureyev or Baryshnikov.

They played a minute or so of one of his scenes, in which he leaps almost defying gravity, spinning in the air before landing. It too leaves me as cold as do Jackson’s antics. I would never go to watch a ballet, or even an opera with a ballet scene in it, unless that scene was very short and the opera a special favourite otherwise (and none that I can think of have such interludes). All dance bores me, and both ballet and whatever Jackson used to do bore me more than most.

There is in my unknown past, for (as far as I can recall) I have never related this story to anybody, family or friends, a slight connection to the reputation and legend of this entertainer who has just died. About 21 years ago (1988), while I was working on my first contract at IBM UK Laboratories, Hursley, I hit a stretch where there was going to be little to do for some weeks and yet I was feeling extra stressed. It was the preceding year or so, developing IBM's first DTP (desktop publishing) POSTSCRIPT printer, and it had been stressful, though in a fascinating and challenging way, so that I had thoroughly enjoyed the job the whole time. The easing of that steady though tolerable and even enjoyable pressure of work, for a couple of months between the third version (or so) and what was to be the fourth and last, brought on (in a pattern recognized by psychiatrists who write books about clinical depression) a temporary collapse into melancholy that may have been the first sign of the inherited tendency to melancholia — mild chronic clinical depression — that was to return a decade later and stay more or less permanently.

At the time, I asked for 3 weeks holiday and stopped going in every weekday for that period. At first, I rested at home for a day or two; then I went to a highstreet travel agency in one of the nearest towns (I forget which) and bought a last minute bargain package holiday fortnight on Ibiza, an island I had never visited. In fact I had not been away on holiday for years, probably not since 1982 when I was in America for a job and took time to visit places while I was there especially after the job ended suddenly (forcing a return to England).

On that 1988 Ibiza holiday I mostly visted various beaches during the day, and on some evenings I wandered on the waterfront of Ibiza town. There was constant advertizing all over the island and in the town of nightclubs and discos at various places across the island, and one night I went to one of these in another town, out of curiosity. These discos would shine spotlights into the sky so that you could see where the place was almost from the other side of the island; well, actually, because Ibiza is a hill, what you could see from the coastal towns to the north and south the spotlight advertizing a disco nightclub located in the centre of the island, on the hilltop visible from either side.

These discos tended to start around 23:00 and go on till dawn, chucking-out time being around 06:00 — in the daylight of the morrow morn. On my own, rather bored but mesmerized by the very loud music, I found myself on the edge of the small central dance area moving my feet, toes and heels, in time to the music in a pattern. A few other folk, mostly way younger than me (I had my 38th birthday that year), started commenting: “Michael Jackson!” they said.

Now, I had heard of this chap but taken little notice, never watched him for more than a few seconds on some TV item about him or his family group. However taking this as a compliment (for so they seemed to intend it) I carried on. I had had a drink at that point and was, I guess, amused by the interest. That night, a young woman there on her own talked with me a bit and I got out of her a guess as to my age, which she put at 28, which pleased me rather at the time. I think that a man past 35 is entitled to a small amount of satisfaction if taken for ten years younger than he really is.

I have no idea whether I could still fool anybody into thinking I could dance like Michael Jackson; but it remains a nice memory of a time when I had needed just to do something completely different for a couple of weeks, and have some fun. I did that, anyway, on that holiday island.