Veil Or No Veil
I’m a big fan of small acts of unsolicited kindness to and from strangers. I like good manners and, being an old fashioned sort, I also enjoy chivalry and not just because I fancy having a natty suit of armour and a warcharger. In short, I despise beastliness.
So, being of good breeding and while dropping my daughter off at school the other day, I held the gate open for one of the mothers. I didn’t catch a thank you from her which isn’t unusual - 90% of the parents with children at the school are pig ignorant after all.
What was different, however, is that the mother was wearing the niqab. And do you know, like Jack Straw, I realised that the garment can be a barrier to communication; the mother may well have smiled gratefully and said an unostentatious ‘thank you’, both niceties being disguised by the niqab.
Where Jack, a man with evidently such thin skin and delicate sensibilities that it remains a wonder how he ever summoned the courage to shake the hand of Robert Mugabe or flog weapons across the globe, evidently frets about this kind of thing, on further consideration I realised there is in fact an upside. Whereas I would have mentally added a non-niqab wearing parent displaying such behaviour to my list of enemies, on this occasion I didn’t.
The mother may have said thank you, she may not have. That being the case, I’d like to posit a new theory based on the famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat.
I know for a fact that 90% of the non-niqab wearing parents in the schoolyard, knowing neither the cost nor value of civility (low and high, respectively), are ill-bred boors deserving of a size nine up the backside and capable of spoiling my mood. Under the terms of McKeating’s Niqab, however, just as the physicist’s feline was simultaneously both alive and dead, so a niqab-wearing mother is both polite and friendly and rude and stand offish. Or, for those readers of lower intelligence, much like a box that could be holding either £50,000 or one penny.
In this state of uncertainty, I am neither able to condemn the mother along with the rest nor gather her to my bosom as I have those showing themselves worthy of my esteem. My mood is neither spoiled nor elevated and a sense of benign ambivalence is maintained until further evidence is presented. A synthesis - a Third Way, if you will - is reached, while achieving a state of being that is quintessentially British.
What could be more modern than that? The conclusion that this new theory arrives at is surely, in Britain today, we should decide to refuse The Banker’s* offer.
*Popular rhyming slang.
Posted on October 17th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
| See also • Jack Straw: curiouser and incuriouser • It’s rude to point • Crystal Balls |
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Filed under Pooterism, Science and progress, Theology |
[...] In the course of expounding his provocative new theory, McKeating’s Niqab, a variation of Schrödinger’s cat whereby the niqab-wearing mother of some children at his son’s school was simultaneously ‘both polite and friendly and rude and stand offish’, thus leaving him in a typically British state of benign ambiguity, Justin mentions that Jack Straw is [...]
From a utilitarian point of view, niqab wearers enhance your day because the uncertainty of their reply leaves you in a neutral mood, whereas 90% of the not-veiled spoil your mood. I’d suggest that the more niqab wearers you encountered the better mood you would have.
On the other hand, if you assume she was rude and stand-offish, just think how well integrated she’s become into British society.
Lobster: I can’t help thinking that the kind of people who get so steamed up about what Muslim women wear on their head, would not have their day so enhanced in the way you describe. Thus proving something, not only about the mood-enhancing effects of the niqab, but our indignant compatriots.
I wonder what the etiquette is for a moslem woman in a niqab even noticing a male outside her immediate family.
Here’s an idea - why don’t you ask one?
Yes, Wendy J, like John B said. And I’d like to add: what’s your point?
Please disavow me of this nagging perception of your ignorance/bigotry.
In an inversion of Justin’s elegant formula, can we ask if Jack Straw is currently in a state of whipping up cheap anti-Muslim sentiment in a bid for higher political office and not doing so at the exact same time? He seems to want to have it both ways, so why not let him?
[...] Second, John Brissenden’s reply to ‘Wendy J’ on Justin’s excellent contribution to the debate over whether a dress code which somewhere around 0.06% of the population follow is more important than climate change. [...]
[...] McKeating’s Niqab A cultural ‘Deal or No Deal’ [...]
An interesting idea. I’ve just finished 3 years in the Middle East, where there are as you’d expect hundreds of women wearing veils. As an expat, it is pretty unusual to ever have occasion to speak to one of them, although once or twice I had to deal with a veiled woman in some government department or other. It is a pain in the neck, as they usually speak poorly and softly, and you don’t realise how important watching lip movements is to understand somebody until you are presented with a veiled lady as your interlocutor.
As a guess, from my experience, I’d put my money on the lady in question having ignored you completely; but I am reminded that the most likeable, polite, and sociable couple I ever sat next to on a plane were a young husband and wife from Manchester but of Banlgadeshi extraction who were both fanatical Muslims. At any rate, it’s hard to see how she would have been any ruder than the average Brit no matter what she did under her veil.