Ban the burka

You published two excellent letters from Andrew Gray and Neil Barber on the wearing of the niqab/burka (18 September).

Imam Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford did a great service to race relations when he said that nowhere in Islam’s transcendent text is there any religious compulsion for women to conceal their faces.

He points out that it is a pre-Islamic practice and is an archaic aristocratic custom originating in ancient Persia, and as such Britain is wrong to think of this as a principle of religious freedom and human rights when it is neither. He points out that it is illegal for masked women to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca or to perform their daily prayers.

Unless a determined stand is taken, then what is next?

Sharia law, child brides, female genital mutilation, death by stoning for adulterous women?

Britain must join France, Belgium and other countries in outlawing the niqab/burka in public places.

Clark Cross

Springfield Road

Linlithgow