Hypocrisy by the Sackful: Women in European cities have been attacked, slashed and had acid thrown in their faces for wearing ‘immodest’ dress in areas where Islamic misogyny prevails. By John O’Sullivan.

In the last month several Iranian women have been sentenced to long years of imprisonment in the country’s harsh jails for the crime of removing the burka in public. Wearing a garment that covers most of the body and head is mandatory in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Demonstrations by women against this and similar rules have been spreading in both countries …

Yet if you type the single word burka into Google, the first three visual stories that pop up are all related to the recent article by Boris Johnson in the London Daily Telegraph in which he criticised the burka as resembling a “letterbox”. …

So what explains the outraged reactions to the column? …

“Diversity” has never been passed into law, but it’s now the theory of the modern British state. And Boris seemingly offended against it.

Various faction fights are taking place under cover of this row. May and the Remainer Tories are using the debate to depict Boris as a reckless extremist who should be kept away from power if Theresa May is ousted in autumn, as most people expect. His leftist critics in Labour and the media are desperately trying to ensure that their structure of multiculturalism and diversity remains intact and continues to give them a political advantage in keeping ethnic and religious minorities within the Left coalition. And the Islamists are hoping to establish as a rule of UK politics that no aspect of Islam (by which they mean Islamism) can be open to criticism. These are all influential forces, not often found on the same side of any debate, and a week ago they must have calculated that their combined forces could hardly avoid victory.

But two forces have emerged, also in combination, to frustrate their calculations. Public opinion in several polls has come down firmly on Boris’s side, if also beyond his arguments. Between 50 and 70 per cent of Brits think that free speech is today facing too many restrictions — and that maybe the burka should actually be banned. Still more important, a significant number of reform-minded Muslims, including women who were themselves offended by the burka and the extreme and fanatical version of Islamism it symbolised, have made strong public statements that in effect endorse Boris. …

Only a few references had been made to women being brutalised and imprisoned for not wearing the burka. But, as Barabas explains, “that was in another country and besides the wench is dead”. Except that increasingly it isn’t. Women in Paris, London and other European cities have been physically attacked, slashed, and had acid thrown in their faces for wearing “immodest” dress in areas where “radicalised” Islamists are a significant percentage of the local population. This violent intimidation is spreading, and the spread of the burka is a sign that some submit to it. …

This issue is not going away. In fact it’s only just arriving.

hat-tip Stephen Neil