The Far Right is Still With Us

She's at it again. The Sectarian of State for Muslim Control, Ruth Kelly, has been giving more useful advice to the aliens in our midst. If Muslims do not "root out their own extremists", such as women who choose to dress in a fashion which Jack Straw finds uncomfortable to behold, then "the far right could exploit community divisions". It would certainly be too bad if people far to the right of New Labour took over the business of exploiting divisions between communities. Detention without trial; tarring all Muslims with the "extremist" brush; surveillance programmes for university students - who knows what they might dream up?

Elsewhere at the Department of Tact, Phil Woolas the generational crusader mounted his hobnailed pogo stick and bounded gently into the controversy over Aishah Azmi, a Muslim teaching assistant who has been suspended from a Church of England junior school for refusing to remove her veil. Woolas observed that barring men from working with Ms Azmi would be "sexual discrimination", which is perfectly true but entirely beside the point, since nobody has suggested doing anything of the kind. Woolas also said that, by wearing the veil and thus inuring children to its perfidious effect, so that in later life they may be free from the famous discomfort experienced by Jack Straw, Ms Azmi was "denying the right of children to a full education". Woolas also said that she ought to be sacked. It is not clear to me whether such ministerial interventions in unresolved cases of this sort are considered good practice generally, or whether they are the standard only in those emergencies where Muslims are involved.