Pinch me, I must be dreaming. Jack Straw of all people has broken the great taboo by daring to challenge the wearing of the Islamic full-face veil in Britain and ignited a hitherto suppressed public debate? Overnight, the man has become a national and international hero. Radio and TV stations report that messages of passionate support have been pouring in from all over the world – with a significant number coming from British Muslims. Yet Straw, Leader of the House of Commons and Britain’s former Foreign Secretary whose Blackburn constituency contains a high proportion of Muslims, has hitherto been the embodiment of appeasement and cultural cringe before the forces of Islamic extremism. Now he has written in an article for his local paper that for the past year, when women have come to see him in his constituency surgery with veils covering their entire faces except for the eyes, he has been asking them to lift their veils so he could speak to them properly. Today he went further still and said he would prefer it if women removed these veils altogether.

So why has he chosen to make this known now, after a year of adopting this approach? Two possible reasons suggest themselves. One, the government may be preparing to adopt a more robust line on Islamic extremism in order to wrongfoot the new model soppy Tories. Two, Straw may intend to run for the post of deputy leader of the Labour party, and may have calculated that the popularity of such remarks, given the widespread concern and anger among the public about the failure to challenge Islamic extremism in Britain, would propel him into the job.

It is in itself a commentary on how far the British have already slid into cultural servitude that asking someone politely if they wouldn’t mind removing the black shroud from their face before having a conversation should have provoked such a storm of controversy over whether or not this was an infringement of personal and religious liberty. We communicate with each other not merely through speech but by looking at the other person’s face. People expect to be able to see others as people, not depersonalised shrouds with eyes. Such concealment diminishes the sense of human community, the feeling that we share the world with other beings like us. It creates a profound sense of anomie and unease.

But more significantly – and Straw did not say this – this type of veil is itself a direct threat to liberty. Clearly, it is a matter of debate within the Islamic world whether it – or, indeed, any type of veil – is necessary to satisfy the injunction upon women to preserve their modesty. What is beyond doubt is that the blackout veil is associated with most extreme interpretation of Islam, which holds that Islamic values must supersede all other values, including those of the secular state. Wearing this veil is thus a political statement of cultural and religious hostility to the British state. Objecting to it, therefore, is not an example of intolerance or religious discrimination. Religious garb should certainly be tolerated, even if it is outlandish; what people wear is their own affair. But this veil is not their own affair. It affects the rest of us because it is inherently aggressive and intimidatory. That is why it is unacceptable.

A number of Muslims have voiced strong support for Straw’s comments. Others, however, responded in the predictable way, sometimes without realising the hole they were digging for themselves. Sheik Ibrahim Nogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, for example, said:

Does Mr Straw mean that people should give up certain cultural and religious customs and practices simply because a vast majority of the country do not share them? That is calling for assimilation. That is saying that one culture or one way of life is superior to another.

Well, actually the point about being British is that, if your minority values conflict with those of the majority, the latter do take precedence. That’s what citizenship is all about. So in his outrage, Mr Nogra gives the game away.

Dr Reefat Drabu, the chairman of the social and family affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, extolled British society — and then promptly extolled something quite different:

This country is supposed to celebrate diversity. That is the wonderful thing about this country: that it accepts, that it is tolerant. Women who wear the veil are making the statement that they are separate from society [my emphasis] and that is why they wear it.

Whoops!

The prize for the most fatuous comment so far must surely go to the Tory party’s policy ‘wise man’ Oliver Letwin, who said on BBC TV Question Time last night that the blackout veil was no more problematic than the fact that one man wore a different style suit from another. Such is the new model Tory grasp of the threat to the west.

A close second was Eddie Mair on BBC Radio Four’s PM programme this afternoon (5.15 approx) who, interviewing me down the line, suggested that the conversation we were having showed it was perfectly possible to talk to someone without seeing them, and therefore no different from talking to someone in a full-blackout veil.

Duh!

Doubtless that explains why the BBC always goes to such lengths to get guests to come into the studio rather than do interviews down the line —precisely because the inability to see the face of the other person so greatly impairs communication in any depth. Next time I’m interviewed in a BBC studio, maybe I should do so under a blanket.

Notably, many Muslims appear to have been sympathetic to Straw’s comments. No doubt they were relieved that at last he had broken the taboo, since those Muslims who do want to sign up to British values, precisely because they value liberty, are likely to be among the principal victims of the jihad. They along with the rest of us are being positively endangered by the astonishing level of denial and appeasement in the establishment, and nowhere more so than in the police.

The Sun newspaper reported yesterday that senior officers within the Diplomatic Protection Group gave PC Alexander Omar-Basha a special dispensation not to guard the Israel embassy in London after he objected on ‘moral’ grounds because of Israeli bombings in Lebanon. The paper reported:

But one senior source said: ‘PC Basha objected to the posting on moral grounds - because of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and the resulting civilian casualties of fellow Muslims.’

Later in the day, however, this explanation changed and it was said that PC Basha had been frightened that he would be targeted by Islamic extremists (Hello?? Wasn’t it the Israel embassy he was guarding that was supposed to be the target of Islamic extremists?)

Then the police came up with a third explanation, that he had been concerned for the safety of his family in Lebanon if pictures of him guarding the Israel embassy had got out.

As they say— pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. Moreover, it appears that the Met has an established policy of excusing an officer from service on ‘moral grounds’ — which in itself is extraordinary — because, as the Guardian reported, in the wake of the Sun story a panic-stricken Met Commissioner ordered a ‘rethink’ of that very policy.

In any event, all three of these explanations are utterly unacceptable. A British police officer takes an oath to serve his country without fear or favour. He cannot pick and choose who to guard or not to guard. There must be no exceptions on the grounds that he doesn’t like the person he is guarding, or is worried for his safety or for the safety of anyone else. If such concerns weigh so heavily on him, he should not be a police officer.

But then the Telegraph discovered another dimension to the story. It reported today that PC Basha’s marriage ceremony three years ago was conducted by Omar Bakri Mohammed, founder of the extremist al Muhajiroun sect which preached holy war against Britain and the west and extreme hatred of the Jews — a man so dangerous to the state that he has been refused re-entry to Britain from Lebanon. It turns out that PC Basha’s father-in-law — described as a ‘Muslim activist’ but who ‘does not share Bakri’s extremist views’, is related to Omar Bakri. It is not known whether PC Basha agreed with his father-in-law, Omar Bakri or neither of them; but since he was married by Omar Bakri, it is a fair bet that he did not have much of a problem with him.

Which raises a different set of questions altogether. How come such a person was in the Met at all, let alone the Diplomatic Protection Group?

This, however, isn’t the half of it. Notwithstanding the apparent success that the police (and security service) have had in uncovering and thwarting terrorist plots being hatched in Britain, the police are in serious difficulty over the whole issue of how to deal with Islamic extremism, towards which they have adopted a policy of strategic appeasement.

A recent programme broadcast on BBC Radio Four, ‘Muslims and the Met’ (sadly, no longer available on line), was more than a little disturbing. It started with a lot of whingeing about how disadvantaged British Muslims had been since the 7/7 bombings, and how distrust and disaffection with the police was epidemic in the community. It then turned out that the speakers were Muslim police officers.

The programme explained that the Met’s strategy was to reach out to the community through regular meetings with the Muslim Safety Forum — an umbrella group which includes such noted ‘moderate’ organisations as the Muslim Council of Britain — whose chairman is Azad Ali. Ali boasted that the MSF had successfully persuaded the police to stop using the term ‘Islamic terrorism’. Asked whether he would ever inform the police if he suspected a suicide bomb attack was in the making, Ali’s answer was revealing. It was forbidden in the Koran to spy on the community, which was ‘abhorrent’, he said firmly. What he would support was helping the police find ‘criminals’. This seemed to exclude those who might be drifting from radicalism into terrorism. He would have no difficulty helping the police, he said, if they had information about ‘specific crimes’ such as drug dealing or murder. The difficulty came, he said, when the police wanted to act against radicalisation or ‘glorifying’ terrorism, as provided in recent new legislation. Radicalisation, he said, was good, extremism was bad and violence was ‘a no-no’.

The problem is, of course, that there is often a straight line linking all three.

This wasn’t all. The programme had two jaw-dropping revelations. The first was that, sitting beside senior police officers as a ‘Muslim prisoners’ representative’ at a meeting between the Met and the Muslim Safety Forum was someone whom the authorities had deemed to be so dangerous he had been detained without trial for two years in Belmarsh prison— and who now spent ten minutes berating the police.

The second was the disclosure by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick — responsible for ‘community integration’ — that the police were considering establishing a group of Muslims with whom to ‘share police intelligence’.

Can anyone imagine, at the height of the bombing campaign in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary sharing intelligence about IRA suspects with a committee of representatives from the Bogside?

Welcome to Londonistan.