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Thursday, 30 July 2009 01:32 |
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I do think there is a case to be made that this isn't a reasonable path for the police to take, although for reasons different to the standard Mail-reader affair.
I remember reading a few years ago about one police force which was asking its members to take their shoes off when they entered the houses of muslims if so asked. This received the usual barrage of foaming hatred ("PC gone mad, muslims taking over" etc.). I thought it seemed like a perfectly decent and respectable thing to do. Besides, I can well imagine plenty of non-muslim households asking the same thing (I am thinking of my mum when the new beige carpets were put in) which I hope and would expect the police to comply with in any household.
But there is a difference here. The headscarf is based on a religious idea of modesty, and to many people (myself included) it is sexist that this is a standard applied to women and not to men. Can you imagine if a religion said that black police officers had to wear headscarves but white ones didn't being patronised in this way? It is true that mosques are private property, but there are reasonable and unreasonable expectations of how far police should go in respecting religious customs. My home is private property, so is it OK for me to insist that police officers can all come in as they are except for cute female ones, who have to wear bikinis? Is it really on to say that a female officer could not enter my home if she refused? How far do you indulge private demands?
The assistant chief constable in the article says: "It recognises and respects the cultural and religious practices of our communities." What about religious communities recognising and respecting the equality of women? Is it more important to respect the gender someone was born with beyond their control, or the cultural/religious beliefs that someone subscribes to by their own choice?
Ultimately, I am not sure what the solution is, but if I were a female officer I would certainly not wear a headscarf if I were entering a mosque as I would feel that it validates a sexist judgment of modesty, and I would resent being asked to. I don't know if it is more morally sound to say that female officers should simply not attend to mosques which expect them to wear a headscarf or to say that mosques should be compelled to accept a female officer, headscarf or not.
One other thing, the article (for what it is worth) does not suggest that this has come about through the demand of mosques, so I wonder if the police are catering to a need which didn't need catering in the first place - in other words, if most mosques really give a toss whether female officers wear headscarves or not. |
