At the Riyadh Heritage and Culture Festival, April 24, 2009 (Fahad Shadeed / Reuters)

In a below post, I mentioned today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. I would like to make another point, a different point, about this same session. A Labour MP, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, made an impassioned speech. (It is customary for members of parliament to make speeches in the form of a question, sort of.) According to this article in the Guardian, Dhesi is the “first turbaned Sikh MP” ever to sit in the House of Commons.


He talked of the pain of being called “towelhead” and other names. This was moving. And he said — demanded — “When will the prime minister finally apologize for his derogatory and racist remarks?”

Dhesi’s speech drew prolonged applause in the Commons, from his side (the Labour side).

He was referring to a column that Boris Johnson wrote in August 2018, after Denmark had banned the burka. The column is here, behind a paywall. It was headed, “Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous — but that’s still no reason to ban it.”

In the course of this column, Johnson wrote, “. . . it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes” (what we in America call “mailboxes”). He further spoke of a student turning up at a lecture or something “looking like a bank robber.”



Johnson is a writer, remember — a writer and a politician, which is a hard thing to pull off (and impossible in America — trust me).

So, how did Johnson answer the impassioned speech by Dhesi? He did four things.

He said that if the gentleman “took the trouble to read the article in question, he would see that it was a strong liberal defense of everybody’s right to wear whatever they want in this country.”

He said he (Johnson himself) had Muslim ancestry.

He said he was proud to preside over “the most diverse cabinet in the history of this country.”

And he said, What is Labour going to do about the virus of anti-Semitism, which is running rampant through that party? You wanna apologize for that, huh?

Personally, I wish he had said one other thing: How do we know that women wearing a burka are doing so of their own free will? Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I am for individual choice (generally speaking). I can well understand the desire, the choice, to wear a burka, and I respect that choice, frankly. But is a woman forced to wear a burka? Does she feel comfortable in one? Or does she fear harm if she goes without a burka — including from her very family?


This is what leaves me unsettled about the burka question. This is why, as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Dhesi and others can stuff their indignation.