Jilbab: A victory for fanaticism
Human rights was the Blairs’ pension plan long before they got into property speculation
By Richard Littlejohn
The Sun, 4 March 2005
If schoolgirl Shabina Begum actually wrote the speech she delivered on the steps of the Appeal Court yesterday then clearly her education hasn’t suffered from being refused permission to turn up for class dressed from head to toe in Islamic costume.
“The decision of Denbigh High School to prevent my adherence to my religion cannot unfortunately be viewed merely as a local decision taken in isolation. Rather it was a consequence of an atmosphere that has been created in Western societies post-9/11, an atmosphere in which Islam has been made a target for vilification in the name of the war on terror.”
Not bad for a 16-year-old. I wonder if her brief helped her draft it.
Miss Begum was speaking after winning a landmark case against the school, which sent her home because she insisted on wearing Muslim robes straight out of the Taliban catalogue instead of the approved uniform.
Not that she was being asked to parade around the playground in a St Trinian’s-style gymslip and pigtails. The school has a dress code which accommodates religious sensibilities and is perfectly acceptable to parents and pupils alike. The headmistress of Denbigh is herself a Muslim, as are 79 per cent of her pupils. Girls are allowed to dress modestly in skirt, trousers and a headscarf.
But that’s not good enough for the Islamic fundamentalists who want to turn Britain into a Stone Age theocracy.
This ruling was a victory for fanaticism. Muslim agitators have already been picketing the school trying to force other girls to comply with their own extreme ideas of how young women should dress.
What about the rights of the rest of society?
None of that matters to those who foisted the pernicious “human rights” act upon us and are now making a handsome living out of it.
I mentioned Shabina Begum’s brief earlier. Guess who? Got it in one. Step forward the Wicked Witch, wife of the Prime Minister and High Priestess of “human rights”. She was the leading campaigner for the act and set up Nonces’R’Us to cash in. “Human rights” was the Blairs’ pension plan long before they got into property speculation and fleecing children’s cancer charities.
This latest absurd case cost taxpayers £70,000 – a large chunk of which will end up in the Blairs’ joint bank account. The last time anyone looked, Nonces’R’Us had received £5million in brief fees from the legal aid fund.
Nice work if you can get it.
But it’s even more scandalous than that. This isn’t just about upholding the right of a young woman to wear Islamic costume to school. It’s not simply a trebles-all-round scamboli for lawyers, either.
The “human rights” act is a deliberate and concerted attack on our way of life and our history. Week after week, cases like this come before the courts – usually funded by legal aid. Those of us who predicted this act would become a charter for terrorists, criminals, illegal immigrants, malcontents and chancers have been proved right time and again.
As a result, we’ve lost control of our borders, thugs laugh in our faces, gangsters and paedophiles cop compensation for their crimes, “travellers” colonise the green belt and terrorise sleepy villages. The whole buggers’ muddle over the Belmarsh 12 and the government’s disgraceful plans for house arrest wouldn’t even have arisen were it not for the “human rights” act.
But this isn’t a consequence of the act – it’s the whole point. Those behind it wish to smash every British tradition and custom and destroy our ancient concepts of freedom and justice. They are succeeding in replacing tried-and-tested common law and the rule of Parliament with laws made by Left-wing judges.
Judicial activism has overthrown democracy.
The Left worked out after the defeat of the miners that brute force wouldn’t win. So they turned to the tyranny of the individual instead.
It wasn’t the 1997 election landslide which Blair pronounced his “proudest moment in politics”. It was the introduction of the “human rights” act. That paved the way for the triumph of perversity and topsy-turvy “justice” which led to the kind of fiasco we saw in the Appeal Court this week.
This country is being changed before our eyes with deliberate ruthlessness. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?
Vote Labour.