As soon as we play at the enemy’s game of mindless intolerance we have lost the battle

Belgium has already banned it and France is looking to follow suit. Last week banning the burka was even proposed in Britain. I watched the MP, Philip Hollobone trying to defend his motion on the Daily Politics the other day. I afraid to say his defence was pathetic. The crucial moment was when he started ‘we in Britain don’t cover our faces’. At this statement he lost the argument. The point is we in Britain can do whatever we like, as long as it is not a crime and is not inciting others to commit crimes. Usually crimes are defined by the harm they cause to others and hence why the justification for the laws' intervention.

If we are seriously arguing that we want the law to intervene and make a crime of wearing a particular piece of clothing, we wholly turn our back on our sacred liberal, tolerant and free society that we hold dear in Britain. In Britain this has only been achieved through the cost of many lives whose sacrifice was made so that we can enjoy a free society. Indeed, it is those values of freedom and tolerance that we should use to guide us in trying to defend against the culture that the burka originates, in general terms: Islamic fundamentalism. An ideology that does not believe in freedom and tolerance, an ideology that in its darkest and evident form, is so intolerant that it murders innocent lives on a mass scale simply because society does not accept its view of the world.

Islamic fundamentalism is a very real and tangible threat to our society and way of life. We must take our responsibility to fight it very seriously. Once we try to defeat it with intolerance and at the cost of our values, then we forget the reason why we are fighting in the first place. We may as well be two sides fighting for equally meaningless causes.

My personal view of the burka is that I am not particularly keen on it, in fact if I am honest I find it rather sinister. I also believe that it provides a powerful image of Islamic fundamentalism’s inequality in respect of its treatment of women, and I struggle to understand why any women would like to wear one. But that is simply my view. A view, which I am sure some may find offensive, but that is not the point and nor is it that some people find the wearing of the burka offensive. In Britain that it is my right to state my view and it is the Islamic woman's right to wear the burka.

So please Hollobone and co, stop speaking nonsense! Banning the burka is an embarrassingly self-defeating idea. As soon as we play at the enemy’s game of mindless intolerance we have lost the battle.