Want to ban the burka? Try asking the women like me first
It wasn't just a mishearing.
It was a reminder that in this country, politicians feel entitled to debate our clothing, our faith and our freedom - yet still stumble over the word burka. They discuss what Muslim women wear, but can't pronounce it correctly. It's not burger, and it's not burk-ah. It's boorkah.
The very least politicians can do, before legislating our lives, is get the name right.
Some might argue that since some Muslim-majority countries have banned the burka - that makes it a legitimate position. Morocco, Tunisia, and others have imposed restrictions, often in the name of modernisation, national unity, or security.
Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin questioned Keir Starmer in Prime Minister's Questions whether he would follow some European countries lead in banning the burka. pic.twitter.com/oyhZClOArr
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 5, 2025
But authoritarianism should not be confused with liberation. The outcome is the same: women's agency is erased, and the state decides how we appear in public. That isn't empowerment - it's control, dressed up as reform.
In 2015, a white man approached me and asked: 'What colour is your hair under your veil?' I replied: 'It's pink,' but didn't ask him what colour his hair had been before he went bald.
That moment stayed with me because it revealed how people feel entitled to interrogate Muslim women.
I later wrote a book about that experience, My Hair Is Pink Under This Veil, chronicling my decision to wear the hijab and the questions, assumptions, and aggressions that came with it. The burka, like the hijab, has become a symbol onto which people project their fears, fantasies and frustrations.
But behind every veil is a person - thinking, choosing, living.
So when politicians like Sarah Pochin suggest banning the burka, they're not just mispronouncing a word, they're speaking for women like me without asking our opinion. Women like me who are voters, writers, public office holders and community builders. Our identities cannot be legislated away and our voices won't be silenced - not by policy, not by prejudice, not by fear.
This is discrimination, and it's happening in a country where 61% of young women from racial minorities already report facing bias at work.
The debate around Islam, inequality and integration shifts with every headline, political soundbite, crisis or act of violence.
Against this backdrop, Muslim women have had to fight to carve out our place in society.
How can we speak of integration in a Brexit era when Muslim women are still labelled "submissive" and white men feel emboldened to tear veils from our heads in public? When Muslim girls grow up amid poverty, deprivation, drug abuse and exploitation? When gender-based Islamophobia intensifies under the guise of national cohesion?
We must ask what the veil means - not just to Muslim women, but to those who react to it. Is it a personal expression of faith and identity? A misunderstood political symbol? Or a mirror exposing the anxieties of modern Britain?
Right-wing and nationalist forces have long exploited the veil as either a symbol of oppression or defiance, and labelled it something to fear.
I remember working on the Isle of Dogs in East London when the British National Party had a councillor elected. Combat 18 roamed the streets. A Muslim grocer had a pig's head flung into his shop in broad daylight.
There was one estate where I had to support two Bangladeshi families to relocate after repeated hostilities. One mother had her headscarf pulled off while walking her children to school. The racists shouted: "Rights for whites".
A local police station had to assign female officers to escort children to Quranic classes. In another case, a white woman filed a complaint against her elderly Muslim neighbour for planting coriander instead of roses in her garden. When I asked if the woman had broken any tenancy rules or caused disturbance, the complainant said no, but insisted: "She's gotta learn to be like us. British."
When Boris Johnson made his "letterbox" comment in 2018, several older Muslim women asked me if he owned a hairbrush, and said they'd gladly send him one if not.
That same weekend, I was travelling with a group of women when a man let us board the train first. One of the women wearing a niqab was the last to get on. As she stepped through the doors, he laughed and said: 'Hold on, you forgot the letterbox.'
He thought it was a joke, just quoting the former prime minister.
This is the landscape Muslim women navigate: a Britain where our plants, our clothing, our languages and even our presence are subject to judgment.
And still, we show up - as doctors, nurses, teachers, CEOs, activists, artists, engineers, journalists, scientists, academics, councillors, carers and community organisers.
Because we believe in a Britain where Muslim women are trusted to define our own visibility - not questioned, not punished and not erased.
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