When preparing to announce his position on the 2016 EU referendum, Boris Johnson notoriously drafted two statements : one declaring his support for the Leave campaign, and the other opting for the Remain cause.
In his Daily Telegraph article this week about the Muslim burka and the veil, the former Foreign Secretary pulled off a different trick — contriving to squeeze two entirely separate newspaper columns into one.
The first was a liberal defence of the freedom of a Muslim woman in this country — in contrast to France, Belgium and, most recently, Denmark — to wear religious clothing “in a public place, when she is simply minding her own business”. In this strand of his argument Johnson declared himself opposed to any “heavy-handed attempt” to ban such practices.
In this two-for-one deal, however, the second column — intertwined with the first — made a quite different point. While notionally hostile to a “total ban”, Johnson insisted that Muslim women should not cover their faces when attending (say) constituency surgeries, school, or university, or when working “for individual businesses or branches of government” where it was important for people to be “able to see each other’s faces and read their expressions”.
This argument, though much-disputed, is not in itself bigoted and has been made by many others before. The fork in the road came, appropriately enough, in Johnson’s irrepressible instinct to reduce everything to a joke: a Muslim woman wearing the veil, he said, resembled “a bank robber”. It was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes”.
In two cheap, throwaway gags, he managed both to criminalise and to dehumanise those he was elsewhere claiming to defend. This is having your liberalism, and eating it — it won’t do.
It’s quite right, therefore, that Theresa May and Brandon Lewis, the Tory party chairman, have demanded an apology from Johnson. In theory the case is complicated by the conspicuous absence of an agreed definition of “Islamophobia” (in marked contrast to the globally recognised International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism).
It is true that Islam, like any other belief system, cannot expect immunity from criticism. Any definition of Islamophobia that encompassed, say, Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses or the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo would be a dangerous infringement of the rights of free expression. Blasphemy and bigotry are not the same thing, in spite of the many efforts to conflate them.
The best working definition I have encountered appeared in the Runnymede Trust’s 2017 report on the subject. “Islamophobia,” it concluded, “is anti-Muslim racism … any distinction, exclusion, or restriction towards, or preference against Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”
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This approach upsets those who object that Islam is a religion, not a race. But it has the great merit of looking for Islamophobia in the treatment of Muslims, rather than in the discussion of Islam as a belief. And this is why Johnson’s remarks were so deeply objectionable: quite unambiguously he demeaned Muslim women in demotic language that echoes the casual mockery of the street or the pub. It is a rhetorical device as cunning as it is reprehensible
Predictably, Johnson has declined to apologise. Instead he is using one of the favourite tricks of the new populist Right, which is to confuse and befuddle his opponents with multiple messages, while sending a clear signal to his target audience. On the one hand he claims — via “sources” — to be speaking up for “liberal values” and open debate. On the other, he deploys language that is transparently designed to appeal to the Right of the Conservative Party — in particular the more illiberal members who will decide, in the next leadership contest, who succeeds May.
My hunch is that he knew full well that some of his remarks would gain a wider currency than the Telegraph’s readership, and that many of the same people who cheer on the far-Right activist Tommy Robinson would soon be cheering him on, too.
Whether he planned this or not, it has happened. Social media is fizzing with nasty posts praising the man who, until recently, held one of the great offices of state, for “speaking the truth”. With a couple of unpleasant gags Boris has achieved precisely what Enoch Powell sought in his “rivers of blood” speech: a following on the populist Right.
Is it coincidence that he has been in close contact with Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon? Perhaps. What is certainly true is that Bannon will approve heartily of what he has done.
The founder of the Conservative Muslim Forum, Lord Sheikh, has called for the party whip to be removed from Johnson. This would be a radical escalation and might indeed enhance his popularity in certain quarters. But the PM and Julian Smith, the chief whip, should not rule out such a step if Johnson remains obdurate.
It is essential that he apologise, without qualification, for the disgrace he has brought on his party. It is essential that this not be brushed aside as a “gaffe’’.
It is essential that May prevails in this stand-off. Or where stands her promise in Downing Street two years ago to fight “burning injustice” wherever she encountered it?