Muslim teachers should be banned from covering faces: report

LONDON: A confidential report from British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s strategy unit has suggested that Muslim women teachers should be banned from covering their faces with the niqab veil in the classroom to defuse social tensions.

The report comes weeks after Britain’s former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sugessted that veiled women visiting his constituency surgery should uncover their faces.

The government “may make it clear that wearing a veil in public has potential consequences on cohesion”, the Sunday Times today quoted a Downing Street memo as saying.

The report also said “illegal immmigration as a greatest challenge for cohesion….With clandestine entrants (eg on the back of a lorry) presenting greater challenges than overstayers.” The 60-page report Policy Review: Crime, Justice and Cohesion was written last month. It also “attacks the police for failing” to improve their performance despite big budget increases, the newspaper said.

It also adds that “there is an increasing wealth gap . . . The very poorest have got poorer since 1997”.