It's all about mini skirts and veils

The appropriateness of mini skirts and face veils are culturally dependent. The fury that was sparked when a Sheik criticised the former is in sharp contrast to community approval questioning the appropriateness of the face veil. This reveals an underlying racist core in Australia.

That’s one of the main conclusions to be drawn from the furious response to the comments by Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali that females who wear skimpy clothing are inviting sexual advances. Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward has even called for the Sheik to be deported for the comments.

Of course the comments by the Sheik are impertinent and as Goward correctly notes, Australia has moved on from that thinking a long time ago. Females can wear whatever they want and if that causes offence or a bit of over-excitement to some blokes, that’s a problem the blokes need to deal with.

What one wears is a paradigm self-regarding act. And to this end, the limits of such conduct were nailed about 150 years ago by famous British Philosopher John Stuart Mill: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”

There is no need to deport the Sheik. All he needs to do is come to one of my philosophy classes. We will need to find a big room, though. Many Australians, including some of our leading politicians, need to come to at least the first couple of lectures. The acquiescence by most Australians with the comments of the Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello that the Muslim face veil is confronting underlies a disturbing form of relativism that reveals Australia’s racist underbelly.

These double standards aren’t confined to Australia. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for worldwide debate on the wearing of face veils by Muslim women. The debate is becoming so intense that chairman of the UK Commission for Racial Equality said that the issue risked sparking "fire" on the streets.

According to Blair, the face veil should be dropped because it is a mark of separation and makes non-Muslims feel uncomfortable. That’s nonsense. If people feel uncomfortable about face veils, that’s their petty problem.

It is also absurd to suggest that we have a right to view the faces of those with whom we come into contact. The face is just another body part and no more required to be exposed or concealed than breasts, hands and belly buttons. It is simply a Western convention that we tend to expose our faces. But there is nothing about the human condition that requires facial familiarity to forge an integrated society. A quick visit to Saudi Arabi and the United Arab Emirates provides conclusive proof of that.

The telephone also lays to rest any suggestion that seeing a person’s face is essential for effective communication.

Blair has labelled the face veil as a move towards voluntary apartheid. On this score, he is half right. In fact it is involuntary apartheid, brought about by his intolerance to difference.

The key to a more integrated and harmonious multicultural society is for people of all religions and races to mix more. This requires, at the minimum, knowledge of a person’s religious and cultural background and a willingness to open one’s mind to different perspectives.

The lessons of the past teach us that greater awareness of our supposed differences serves to unite us. The more tightly certain types of information is guarded, the more entrenched is likely to remain its significance and the prejudice that it can induce.

A good example of familiarity leading to greater acceptance is the changed community attitude towards homosexuals. The courage displayed by some high profile people to come out over the past decade or so seems to have blazed the trail for many previously closeted homosexuals to do likewise. This has resulted in a discernible dampening down of previously existing widespread homophobic attitudes.

It is not difficult to multiple such examples. Presently, a similar enlightenment seems to be occurring in the context of mental illness.

For people that are still unconvinced about the compatibility of the face veil and community harmony, they should spend a pleasant afternoon at my old stomping ground, the Broadmeadows Shopping Square. The people of Broady don’t fare well on most indicia of social flourishing, such as wealth and education standards. But they are fortunate enough to have undergone cultural enlightenment as a result of sharing their patch with one of the biggest Muslim populations in the country.

In Broady, face veils are nearly as common as eye jarring “muffin tops”, (the effect of obese bodies in overly tight low cut jeans) and are more tasteful. In fact face veils are so inoffensive they are ignored - commonality has led to invisibility.

At the same time, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali needs to spend a bit of time at Bondi Beach over the summer. There he’ll quickly come to realise that women and men both wearing not much usually have far more in common than sex on the mind.

In the end, opposition to the face veil is all about Western prejudice, just as opposition to the mini skirt is all about Islamic prejudice. Once the overblown sensitivities of others start constituting a basis for curtailing our freedoms, liberty in any form is lost.

Westerners and Muslims both need to drop their small minded relativistic perspectives and embrace a more universal and tolerant disposition - national unity depends on it.