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Sex-Less-Clothes

There’s a lot of excitement in the Press just now, with two car bomb threats averted in London and another at Glasgow Airport. It strikes me as deeply chilling that the London bomb attempts were targeted near nightclubs where hundreds of young people and, in particular, slags (sic) would have been killed or maimed. This is not a terrorist attack against capitalism or even Christianity, or a general lack of faith in the UK but an attack on our women.

In the same newspaper I read an article about a magistrate who is apologizing for his unprofessional conduct when he walked out of the Courtroom because a young Muslim woman appeared before him in a hijab with a mere slit for her eyes to peep through.

I have no idea what she had done to require a presence before the beak, but identity must surely be called into question in Court. She is apparently hurt and outraged at being asked to unveil where men are present. However, anyone could have been under that veil, her uncle for instance, sent along in disguise to act on her behalf.

In post offices up and down the country, sample photographs demonstrate the acceptable identification requirement for a passport. A woman can be veiled around the face but her face needs to be visible in a UK court of law. Being tried by a panel of women is a possibility but UK laws apply in UK Courts, as surely as western women need to comply when in Muslim countries, as did the female naval officer who was obliged to be veiled during the period of her captivity in the recent detention of sailors.

The most terrifying thing to me about the whole need for a Muslim woman to be veiled and covered is the stated impossibility for Muslim men to ‘control themselves’ in the presence of a woman revealing any hair or skin. Even westernized Muslim women talk about the need to cover up in their home countries because they feel so vulnerable; at risk of attack or rape.

Friends laugh at me for saying that western young women show off too much flesh, and that I’m a bit old fashioned as far as cleavage and thigh flashing goes. I am generally in favour of modesty, and nicely cut clothes – elegance over obviousness. A bit of mystery is quite attractive I think, and I’d far rather see a man in a good shirt and well tailored pair of trousers than walking along the street in a wife-beater vest and too-short shorts, with all his skin on display. Men look good in suits as they create the illusion that there's a pair of shoulders under there.

But, as for these two extremes of women’s dressing, the very idea that a young woman in her prime, wanting to put all her goods on display for late night revellers in London should be murdered for doing so is too bizarre to comprehend.

The sub-text here is that certain extremist Muslim men are thwarted and severely repressed by the tight restrictions on their own and their countrywomen’s sexuality. They therefore seek to release that frustration by destroying free, healthy, uninhibited young British women. Such extremists have no understanding of what it is to be carefree and sexually confident.

I don’t advocate going out on the town jiggling around in a low cut top and too-short skirt and ridiculous heels but aren’t these girls just showing off? They are not saying they want to be raped, or that they will have sex with anyone, indiscriminately. If we put goods for sale on market stalls and in shops up and down the country, however tempting the fruit or produce may be to the browser, the shopkeeper is not saying “here, just help yourself,” but, “isn’t my produce the most appealing in the street?” But, if they don't cover up a bit, they'll catch their death.

Tolerance, gentleman, please. Self-control. Restraint. Education. Understanding. Live and let live. Mind your own business. Live within a culture that you can respect, not within one you despise.

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