GLIMPSES BEHIND THE VEIL

So lawyers should be allowed to hide their faces in court? Bizarre...

Muslim-American author Asra Nomani says western publishers seem determined to make Muslim women cover up on the front of books:

They're imposing the veil on women. I barely escaped the same fate myself...Publishing houses, art directors, and photo agencies are increasingly using stock photos of (supposedly) Muslim babes with piercing kohl-lined eyes framed by the pitch-black niqab...

Another moderate voice, British businessman, Sir Gulam Noon, enters the fray in the Independent:

We have lost sight of what's important. Perhaps we should also take a steer from the requirement that women who perform the part of the Hajj which takes them to the Ka'bah (the holiest site in Islam) are explicitly required to remove their veil. Veil wearing is not a universal injunction in Islam, although I strongly defend a woman's right to wear a head covering as a mark of her faith.

Note that he also wants the UK authorities to be "more heavy-handed" with extremists:

Such groups do not speak for the decent, hard-working majority in the Muslim community who just want to get on with their lives without threat of terrorist violence or association with it. Failing to root out extremism and silence fanatical preachers has served only to diminish the authority of the law and the liberty of law-abiding citizens.

Kudos to Pickled Politics for drawing attention to Channel 4 journalist Samira Ahmed's complaint that some media organisations avoid running stories about fundamentalists because they're scared of appearing culturally insensitive:

A vicious misogyny is often a crucial part of the alienating ideology promoted in these groups. I also believe in fighting the great temptation of news editors, to give more airtime to the radicals, (it's guaranteed infotainment) rather than the much harder job of getting to know communities and finding more representative voices.