A survey of the media coverage that followed Jack Straw’s requests to Muslim women to remove their face veils when visiting him in his constituency surgery charts the ways in which the wearing of Muslim headscarves and face veils in the UK today has assumed increased social and political significance.

The study of nearly 500 newspaper articles, which were published in a 10-day period following Straw’s comments, outlines how Muslim ‘differences’ have become allied to notions of British national identity, citizenship and gender equality.

The key findings, published in the current issue of The Sociological Review, are that press discussions about the veil invoked an account of Britishness that was defined, not by stating what Britishness is but by describing what it is not. Most prominently, particularly in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Britishness was defined as not multicultural.

The authors of the report found variations between leader articles and comment pieces within the same publications. These variations were found to be most pronounced in the Independent and the Guardian, while in other publications there was a consistent opposition to Muslim face veils (the niqab) and an endorsement of Straw’s intervention.

The Independent was found to have displayed the widest disparity, with commentators including Joan Smith and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown expressing opposition to the niqab on feminist grounds and referring to the niqab as a symbol of oppression.

The authors found that some opposition to the form of Muslim ‘difference’ symbolised by the niqab drew heavily upon a ‘security’ theme. This was based on an argument that the niqab represents an obstacle to interpersonal communication, that interpersonal communication is an integral part of interaction between communities, and that some communities need more interaction than others because their separatism gives rise to radicalism (which in turn gives rise to terrorism). Indeed, removing the niqab was, for many commentators, associated with counter-terrorism.

The authors argue that all of this suggests that debates about the veil illustrate one of the ways in which Muslims in Britain have become central to discussions about national identity, citizenship, and gender equality.

The research is published as current debates over the wearing of Muslim headscarves (the hijab) and the niqab continue to feature prominently in a number of European societies. In France, following its ban on the wearing of the hijab in state schools, the government has proposed further legislation to ban the wearing of a full head-and-shoulder covering (the burqa) in public places. In Switzerland, Muslim headscarves and face veils have become the focus of attention not long after the introduction of a ban on the building of Mosque minarets.

Commenting on the findings, Professor Tariq Modood, Director of the University's Centre for Ethnicity and Citizenship and one of the report’s authors, said:

'It is amazing how a small piece of cloth – worn by a tiny number of Muslim women – can cause so much controversy. At first, objection to Muslim modest dress codes focused on how it was alleged to pressurise women and so the issue was liberation. Now that many Muslim women have made it clear that it is freely embraced as a religious duty, it is objected to as separatism and un-British, indeed un-European.'

Dr Nasar Meer, another of the report’s authors, added:

‘Much has been written about the place of Islam and Muslims in Britain, but very little research has systematically explored how accounts of nationhood and citizenship are being invoked during the course of public discussion on Muslim “difference”. This is one of the first studies to address how the print media debate reflects those views.’