Blair: Veil row is part of crucial debate
Tony Blair defends the row over the Muslim veil
Tuesday, 17, Oct 2006 12:00
The row over the Muslim veil is a crucial part of the wider debate on how to integrate different communities into society, Tony Blair argued today.
The prime minister said cabinet colleague Jack Straw was right to raise the issue, and supported his comments that the veil was a "mark of separation".
Mr Blair said it would be "going too far" to suggest people should not wear the veil, but admitted it made people from outside the Muslim community feel uncomfortable.
Mr Straw's comments prompted widespread condemnation, and this weekend the head of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) accused ministers of a "veritable regular drip-fee of ministerial statements stigmatising an entire community".
But during his monthly press conference today, the prime minister cited the row over a BA employee who was told not to wear a cross around her neck and case of the teacher suspended for refusing to remove her veil in class, as proof of a "much bigger argument".
"I know the debate is happening in a somewhat haphazard way…but it is a debate we need to have, a debate which has got two aspects to it," Mr Blair said.
"[These are] the relationship between our society and how the Muslim community integrates in our society…and about Islam itself and how it comes to terms with the modern world."
The debate about integration was being raised all around the world, he said, and Muslim countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore were also questioning the role of their religion in the 21st century.
The government is planning to introduce new proposals for new faith schools to take a quarter of their pupils from different backgrounds, and today Mr Blair admitted the proposals would primarily affect Muslim schools.
But he stressed it was the Labour government who had introduced the right of Muslims to set up their own faith schools, as Jews and Christians had long been able to.
And he said: "We wouldn't be having this debate if it were not to do with people's concerns about integration and separation of Muslims in British society."
He added: "It is not simply about people from different faiths, but what is taught in schools about religion, about the need to integrate in society, the values of tolerance and respect for other faiths."