London : Britain’s former foreign secretary Boris Johnson came under fire on Monday after he described the burqa as “oppressive” and compared Muslim women who wear the clothing to “letter boxes”.
In his regular column in The Daily Telegraph on Sunday, the Conservative Party MP had laid out his views against a complete ban on the Islamic clothing in line with the recent burqa ban in Denmark. “If you tell me that the burka (burqa) is oppressive, then I am with you… I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes,” he wrote.
He said businesses and government agencies in the UK should be able to “enforce a dress code” that allowed them to see people’s faces. “If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then… those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct,” he wrote.