In Belfast, one rarely encounters full facial coverings such as the burqa in public spaces. Security considerations discourage people from obscuring their faces entirely, and any individual who does so may be challenged.
I have walked Belfast a lot over the decades. When, as a journalist, I have sought to speak with people on the streets, my traditional route has been in the west of the city; up the Shankill, across the peace line, then back down the Falls (or the other way around). I always made it easy for people to engage with me as I would wear a noticeable hat or often I had a dog with me.
That gave alert locals the opportunity to challenge me with an opening line of “That’s some hat” or “That’s a grand wee dog” and thus allow them to check out, in a friendly-sounding way, who the stranger among them might be. In the ensuing conversations, I would be open and honest with people and that paid dividends for me every time.
Covering one’s face, be it with a mask or burqa, entirely prevents such engagement and can generate suspicion. Complete facial concealment has long been associated with concealment of intent, sometimes even with threats to public safety. If a person were to walk into a west Belfast cafe, say, wearing a burqa then that person would be immediately overpowered and unmasked. And rightly so. How do you know if someone with their face covered is an ordinary person or a sectarian gunman? People instinctively feel uneasy around those concealing their faces.
I think Belfast is right not to tolerate such masking and I think we should take the same attitude everywhere else in Ireland. That’s why Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan’s planned ban on masks at public protests should be supported and, in my opinion, should be widened in its effect. The Government should bring in more generalised restrictions on any public masking that obscures a person’s identity.
At the Let Women Speak event in Dublin in September 2023, the issue was plainly illustrated. At that event, women took to a podium set up on the street to give their views on why they were opposed to the advance of transgender ideology in Ireland. The gardai had the area cordoned off in order to hold back a crowd of counter-protestors who, with megaphones and loud music, attempted throughout the proceedings to prevent the women at the LWS event from being heard.
Counter-protestors attempted to drown out the speakers using megaphones, loud music, and hostile banners, one of which contained sexually explicit and offensive language. Many among the counter-protestors obscured their faces with masks or paint, which allowed them to engage in intimidation without personal accountability. Several public representatives were present at the counter-protest.
The counter-protestors held up banners with threatening messages including one which read, disgusting to relate, “Suck my trans balls”. Many of them wore masks. Others had their faces disguised with paint. This allowed them to shout their insults and threats from behind the protection of anonymity.
There were lots of posh boys there, trying to shout us down. Disgracefully, a number of TDs were also involved in this attempt to prevent the Let Women Speak event from taking place. I saw Richard Boyd Barrett there and I am reliably informed that Paul Murphy, Ruth Coppinger and Brid Smith were also present.
So how might the planned masking ban have helped us that day? The Department of Justice tells us that “the new ban will prohibit wearing masks at protests when the intent of wearing the face covering is to ‘intimidate’ or prevent police from identifying an individual committing a crime”.
Many of the people protesting against the LWS event certainly acted as if they were there to intimidate. And, I would argue, that for a man to tell a woman to perform a sexual act upon him, as per the counter-protestors’ banners, constitutes a crime. I believe if those men were forbidden to cover their faces then they would not be nearly so brave in shouting women down.
Also, as posh boys, they wouldn’t want their future job prospects to be damaged by them having been seen carrying on in the way that they were. So, next time, let’s make these cowards and bullies show their faces and see how brave they feel then.
A ban on public masking would have had no negative effect on those of us supporting the LWS event. None of us was wearing a mask. None of us was trying to shout the other side down or threaten them with sexual assault. We have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from a ban on masking at public protests.
Now let’s move on to the broader question of masking in public places and, in particular, the wearing of the burqa.
I hate the burqa. It is hideous and sinister-looking. I expect it scares children because it surely scares me. In my culture, a hooded figure is a threat. If a person doesn’t want to harm you then why should that person be stopping you from seeing their face? It is disrespectful of Irish culture for a person to walk the street wearing a burqa.
I hate the oppression inflicted on women who are forced to wear the burqa. I once did a vox pop for radio on Dublin’s South Circular Road (my usual go-to place when I want to meet Muslims) in which a woman, a doctor, told me that whenever she would return to her native Pakistan, the amount of her face she might expose, or not, was determined by how “man-dominant” the region of the country was that she might be going to.
Women I met that day on the South Circular Road who were wearing burqas didn’t answer me when I spoke to them. I don’t know if those women freely chose to wear the burqa, or not, or if they even understood what I was saying to them because not even facial communication was possible between us. The burqa totally prevents women from having any communication with people other than those who have been first approved of by their husbands. That’s the whole point of that loathsome garment.
The burqa is useful for men who want to beat their wives. No-one will see the bruises. Over my years attending district courts throughout Ireland, I have seen women of many nationalities, Polish, Brazilian and so on, along with Irish women, take their husbands to court over domestic violence. I have never seen a Muslim woman do that. I don’t believe that Muslim men are any less likely to beat their wives than are any other men; it’s just that Muslim women don’t seem to use the law to stop them. Irish Traveller women were recently reported to have taunted one of their number who was taking her husband to court over domestic violence, telling her that “this isn’t the Traveller way”. Clearly, it’s not the Muslim way, either. And the burqa, covering the entire body as it does, helps Muslim men to keep it that way.
I hate how the burqa hides women’s beauty. Of course, I hear the burqa-defenders say, women need to be covered up precisely so as to protect them from the gaze of men such as me. So why shouldn’t I have to cover up, too? Do these people think that women are not attracted to men? The fact that women, but not men, are expected to cover themselves up shows the contempt in which women are held by too many Muslim men.
Now, before I move on, I’ll deal with the perennial criticism that is thrown at people such as me who hate the burqa, which is that such hatred is racist. It’s not. The burqa conceals everything about its wearer, including that person’s race. It could be a small, ginger-bearded Irishman under there. More plausibly, it could be an Irish woman who has become an extreme Muslim. Burqa-wearing is not ethnically specific. Criticism of the burqa, no matter how offensive some people might find that criticism to be, cannot be considered to be racist.
So should the burqa be banned in public places? I think not quite, but its use should be restricted.
Subject to public decency and public safety, people should be allowed to wear whatever they like. The burqa impinges on public safety. Motorcyclists are expected to remove their helmets before they enter a public building or shop or business premises. I think, for the same reasons, people should be expected to remove their burqa when they enter such places.
The forthcoming legislation will outlaw masking that conceals a person’s identity at public protests. After that, I recognise the practical difficulties about getting an overall legislative ban on such public masking. But Belfast has shown the way. Public pressure there has effectively banned the burqa from being worn on the street. Belfast people don’t put up with the burqa and nobody else in Ireland should have to put up with it either.”