“‘As I was once strolling through the inner city, I suddenly happened upon an apparition in a long caftan with black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought … but the longer I stared … the more my first question was transformed into a new conception: is this a German?’

“That is the passage from Mein Kampf in which Adolf Hitler describes how, walking as a student through the less salubrious streets of Vienna, he had suddenly understood the true threat that the Jews presented to the Germanic way of life. I hadn’t read those words since I was a student, but somehow they returned to my mind last week, prompted by the UK Independence party’s announcement that it would campaign to ‘ban the burqa’.”

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, 24 January 2010