To Hijab, Or Not To Hijab .. I tend to agree with Jack Straw on the subject of hijabs and niqabs.

Here's what Paul Cruikshank of the NYT's wrote about it:

On the streets of London and other cities in Britain, an incongruous sight has become increasingly common: young Muslim women covered from head to toe in black robes, including the niqab, a veilthat obscures the face except for the eyes.

The niqab sets these young women off not just from most passers-by, but even from Muslim women who choose to wear the simple headscarf, or hijab, which covers only the hair and neck. And it is causing discomfort even in multicultural Britain.

When Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, declared earlier this month that the niqab made positive relations between Muslims and non-Muslims more difficult because it was "such a visible statement of separation and difference," he struck a chord with many British voters, only 22 percent of whom think that Muslims have done enough to fit into mainstream society

Cruikshank goes on to explain how younger women wear the hijab in order to protest their parent's assimilation into the British culture.

That sense of besiegement, not wardrobe decisions, is fueling the real problem that British politicians should be addressing, which is the creeping fundamentalism and Islamist radicalism of a significant portion of Britain's Islamic youth. In a recent poll, more than a quarter of British Muslims under the age of 24 said that the July 7, 2005, attacks on the London Underground were justified because of British foreign policy. Thousands of young British Muslims have been influenced by fundamentalist organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and militant groups like Al Muhajiroun.

These are the groups that have persuaded some Muslim girls that it is their religious duty to adopt the niqab. Kemal Helbawy, the influential founder of the Muslim Association of Britain, says that a very different message is coming out of the country's mainstream mosques, where most imams advise their congregations that the hijab is sufficient

He goes on to write how British Muslims need to be brought into the political process. But, I don't know how that's going to be done without more assimilation. The niqab and hijab are actually just the tip of the iceberg.

There's another thing that occurs to me about the Hijab, and other Muslim covering: Muslim women are supposed to wear them so that men will not be tempted. It's actually kind of an insult to Muslim men; here in the West, we expect our men to control themselves, and we have legal recourse if they don't.

Blue Star Beth wrote a pretty good article about how Tony Blair agrees with Jack Straw.

Crossposted at JihadiDuJour.

Photo from Ijtihad, where you can also read a very interesting discussion of the issue.  ¶ 7:50 AM