Cross Ban Reviewed, Veil Ban Confirmed: A Bad Day For Multiculturalism

Reconsideration Of the Cross Ban, Confirmation Of the Veil Ban –

A Bad Day For Multi-Culturalism

Yesterday, BA – the UK airline – caved into the barrage of criticisms that had been directed at it for its decision on Monday (20 November) confirming that it would not allow one of its employees, Nadia Eweida, to visibly wear a cross pendant during her duties as a check-in operative. On the same day, it was reported that the school-classroom assistant, Aishah Azmi, who had been suspended from her duties for refusing to remove her full veil (niqab) in front of male teachers, had finally been sacked on the alleged grounds that her veil made communication with her pupils difficult.

I have written extensively on the veil issue, particularly during the controversy in the UK in October over calls for Muslim women not to wear the full veil (see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique). On Wednesday of this week, I also discussed the case of Nadia Eweida and concluded that, while on the face of it, BA’s actions had been discriminatory, it was a complex situation and there were in fact some legitimate grounds for BA’s decision. In particular, BA’s response could be viewed as that of a Western-style ‘liberal-Christian’ organisation acting to prevent an ‘inappropriately’ overt expression of Christian faith on the part of a front-line employee: as it were, a disciplinary action carried out by individuals some of whom would consider themselves (perhaps justifiably) to be acting in a Christian way, within a ‘broadly’ Christian corporate culture, towards another Christian employee; not a monolithic secular organisation acting from outside the bounds of Christianity to clamp down on an open expression of that faith within the workplace.

What is disturbing about the fact that BA’s decision to review its uniform policy and Kirklees Council’s decision to dismiss Aishah Azmi were reported on the same day is the links that this suggests between two superficially unrelated cases. Far from being a vindication of the multi-cultural right for individuals of any faith to openly wear symbols of that faith, BA’s original decision and about-turn has been seized upon as a cause célèbre by supporters of moves to define Britain’s identity and values as Christian. And supporters of this cultural trend include many of those who have made statements criticising the full veil.

Those who have celebrated BA’s uniform-policy review have said that it puts Christians on an equal footing with Muslims at BA, who are allowed to wear the head veil (hijab) in positions such as Nadia Eweida’s. But would they say the same about the niqab, or full veil? If a BA employee had been suspended for refusing not to wear a niqab, it is clear that many of the voices that were indignant about Ms Eweida’s case would have backed BA 100%. That’s not to say that it would necessarily be appropriate for a BA check-in operative to wear the niqab; although in a genuinely multi-cultural society, what are the real reasons (not the pretexts, e.g. being able to communicate with and reassure passengers; putting off passengers who have chosen BA because it is supposed to somehow represent Britain in general) why it would not be appropriate in some circumstances?

The point is that defenders of Nadia Eweida have argued that BA does in fact symbolise Britain and that, because Britain is historically and culturally a Christian country, the company should allow its employees to wear symbols of the Christian faith which – I argued in my previous blog – associate the cross with BA’s uniform in a way that subliminally puts across the message that ‘BA is a Christian company’; or at least, ‘a company that represents a Christian country’. This point of view was quite explicitly set out in the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu’s, defence of Ms Eweida earlier in the week. The opposite is also true: that BA’s banning of open cross wearing has seen it labelled as anti-Christian and as a representative of rampant secularism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’, statement on the matter on Thursday was more impartial: basically, criticising BA for denying Ms Eweida a fundamental freedom to express her religious conviction openly, in this instance through the wearing of a symbol of the Christian faith. But we are not in fact talking about a private individual here, or even an employee wearing standard smart clothing of their choice when at work. We’re talking about a uniformed representative of an organisation that clearly is taken as a symbol for Britain as a whole. I would argue that what is evoked, associatively or symbolically, by a uniformed BA member of staff openly wearing a cross is quite different from what is connoted by a similar employee wearing a hijab or a Sikh turban. In the latter instances, I think how most flying passengers would react would be to think that this was an example of Britain being a tolerant, multi-cultural society that is prepared to bend uniform rules in order to allow its employees to act in a manner that is consistent with their faiths, which are minority beliefs in the UK. In the case of an employee visibly wearing a cross, many of BA’s international customers, I am sure, would think that BA had actively encouraged its employees to wear crosses to proudly testify to Britain’s status as a nation of Christian heritage, where the Christian faith is the ‘majority’ religious belief.

It is a similar – though not entirely identical – case to other organisations where uniforms directly or indirectly symbolise the British state, e.g. the army, police, emergency services, etc. I’m sure that these organisations also have uniform policies that ban the open wearing of crosses and other forms of jewellery with a symbolic function (e.g. Stars of David). But you don’t hear a chorus of demands for members of these organisations to be allowed to wear crosses openly. Why? Because – apart from pretext-type arguments around health and safety – soldiers, policemen, etc. are supposed to represent the impartiality of the state and the law to all its citizens of whatever faith; and clearly, in certain sensitive operational situations that confront the army or police, it would be detrimental for the organisation as a whole to be identified as Christian by the fact that a single individual had exercised their freedom to openly wear a cross. Similarly, I have previously argued, there may well have been unspoken security considerations of this sort behind the request made to Nadia Eweida that she wear her cross under her uniform, in order not to identify herself and her airline as Christian, thereby making herself and it more vulnerable to attack. It is consistent with such impartiality (i.e. the desire not to identify an organisation with the majority Christian constituency in the UK) for BA to ask its employees not to signal themselves – and, indeed, single themselves out – as Christian, while at the same time making a compromise that allows members of other faiths that make stricter dress-code demands of their adherents to be true to their beliefs while at work.

One of the self-appointed defenders of Ms Eweida on Thursday of this week was Jack Straw, the former UK Foreign Secretary: the same Jack Straw who sparked off the veil controversy in October by stating that he asks niqab-wearing constituents who meet him at his weekly ‘surgeries’ to remove their veils – in the presence of another woman and of their husbands – in order to facilitate better communication; and by arguing that, in general, the veil served as an impediment to better relations between the mainstream British community and the Muslim community.

Mr Straw stated on Thursday that he shared the concerns of about 100 MPs who had signed parliamentary motions calling on BA to reverse its cross ban, and he indicated that he was expressing only a personal sharing of those MPs’ concerns, not the opinion of the government, which did not have a particular position on the issue. Methinks he protests too much. Mr Straw claimed that he was expressing only a personal point of view in the original veil row; but after a succession of interventions – again, only personal – from government ministers, the prime minister eventually chimed in, stating that he thought the veil was a visible “mark of separation” between Muslims and the rest of society; thereby conveying the distinct impression that the whole controversy was a campaign deliberately orchestrated from the very top. Similarly, I think it’s almost inconceivable that Mr Straw – a close confidant of the PM – did not consult with him over what position to take with respect to the BA row and Labour MPs’ protests against BA’s actions. The two positions – defence of an individual’s right to wear an item of jewellery that symbolically associates BA with Christianity, and rejection of the full veil as something that supposedly sets Muslims apart from British society – are intimately interlinked, and are so at the highest level of our society. They are both part of a drive to reaffirm and redefine ‘common British values’ as being ‘essentially’ (one might say, fundamentally) Christian (more precisely, liberal-Christian) in a way that is increasingly intolerant to overt expressions of difference of any kind (including religious difference), which are interpreted as divisive, radical / extreme and even aggressively hostile.

This is not a victory for multi-culturalism, at least not the inclusive model of it, which does not seek to ‘officially’ identify the national culture with any one religion, while recognising the traditional pre-eminence of particular forms of belief and customs. In this instance, of course, the UK government is trying to cut it both ways: not taking an official position of support for Christianity, while it is clear what its actual position is. No, this is what I have referred to as exclusionist multi-culturalism: minority faiths and cultures must accept integration on terms dictated by the majority culture, or be excluded. And the minority and majority cultures – as the differential responses in the cases of Aishah Azmi and Nadia Eweida demonstrate – are increasingly being framed as Muslim and Christian.

Is BA Within Its Rights To Ban the Cross?

Is BA Within Its Rights To Ban the Cross?

Nice to have a Christian religious discrimination case to discuss for once! On Monday (20 November), an internal hearing at the UK airline BA concluded that the company had been acting fairly to suspend a Christian employee, Nadia Eweida, from her duties for refusing to stop openly displaying what was described by some media as a ‘crucifix’, but was in fact a rather small cross pendant. BA’s uniform policy is that such items may be worn but must be concealed beneath employees’ clothing. However, Sikhs are permitted to wear bangles and Muslims are allowed to wear the hijab on the basis that it would be impractical for such items to be concealed beneath the uniform.

On one level, BA is indeed acting perfectly within their rights. If that is their uniform policy – one which Ms Eweida was aware of when she started working at BA – then it is legitimate for the company to enforce it. Ms Eweida has been offered an alternative job in a non-uniformed role at BA, where she would be entitled to wear her cross openly; but she has turned this down on principle.

On the other hand, BA’s policy itself appears discriminatory, if not perhaps in law (which would have to be proven) at least in fact. Ms Eweida’s argument is that it is her religious duty, as she sees it, to wear her cross openly to testify to the truth of the Christian Gospel. In this sense, the cross is no different from any other religious symbol that members of the religions involved believe it is their duty to wear openly.

In order to test whether BA’s decision is motivated by purely practical considerations, as they claim, or whether the Christian faith is being discriminated against relative to other religions, it would be interesting to see how BA would handle a) symbols from other religions that could be concealed beneath the uniform (e.g. pendants) or b) symbols of Christian faith that it is equally not practical to hide beneath the uniform (e.g. head coverings as advocated by some Baptist or Brethren fellowships). One suspects, though again this can’t be proven, that in case a), the employee would not be suspended like Ms Eweida, owing to fears of the resultant outcry about discrimination; whereas in case b), it might be thought to be more ‘optional’ for an employee to wear such a head covering than for a Muslim to wear a hijab, although in fact wearing the hijab is thought by many to be purely a matter of individual choice.

I feel that behind BA’s decision is an assumption that Christians in secular Western society should not openly bear witness to their faith in their public roles. It is OK for Ms Eweida to be a Christian so long as she keeps her faith to herself: private and hidden beneath her uniform. Displaying her cross – the symbol of her faith – openly would associate it with her public role as a BA check-in operative, symbolised by her uniform. If you will forgive the pun, it is feared that there might be a ‘cross-over’ in the minds of people encountering Ms Eweida, whereby they could fuse the cross and the uniform, and come to the view that BA was a Christian organisation.

Interestingly, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu – who has leapt to Ms Eweida’s defence – has taken a stance which, precisely, reminds BA of the Christian heritage of the country of which BA is nominally the national carrier: "British Airways needs to look again at this decision and to look at the history of the country it represents, whose culture, laws, heritage and tradition owes so much to the very same symbol it would ban".

On the contrary, I would argue, BA has banned open wearing of the cross by uniformed staff precisely because it does not wish to identify itself publicly with ‘Christian Britain’. Would it be stretching things too far to suggest that a specific reason for this reluctance – in addition to the general reason of viewing open witness to Christian faith as inappropriate within a secular context – is that BA fears that by doing so it would make itself more of a target for terrorists? After all, Ms Eweida is a check-in operative, in the first line of defence against luggage that could contain a bomb or some other terrorist weapon. The suspension of Ms Eweida (also, interestingly, of Egyptian Christian origin) came in the wake of the hand-luggage terrorist scare. Could BA have been afraid that a potential suicide bomber could be tempted to let off a device concealed in a bag at the check-in counter, which they might otherwise have been able to smuggle into the plane?

But even without this specific context, it is possible that terrorists could adopt the tactic of blowing themselves up at crowded check-in desks before anyone has carried out any inspection of their luggage. And it would not be surprising that BA would be reluctant for its uniformed employees, especially one in such a high-profile and vulnerable role, to mediate an identification between the airline and the Christian faith that could make it more of a target for terrorists. By contrast, if BA allows Muslims and Sikhs to proudly display the symbols of their faith alongside the BA uniform, this creates the kind of public image that could make it less likely for terrorists to single out BA. BA was, after all, supposed to be one of the airlines that would have been directly targeted by the hand-luggage plot that was thwarted in August because of its association with a Britain that is thought by some Muslims to be anti-Islamic.

If this is the unacknowledged context for BA’s banning of Ms Eweida from openly displaying her cross pendant, then it clearly is discriminatory, even if from a security point of view, it is understandable though something of an over-reaction. But it is discriminatory, even excluding that context, if you accept that Ms Eweida’s choice to wear her cross in this way is as valid an exercise of the freedom of religious expression as the choice of Muslim or Sikh employees to wear the symbols of their religions.

But BA appears not to accept that it has denied a human right to Ms Eweida that it does not deny to employees of other faiths. Rather than seeing this as another case of a cultural secularism that is increasingly prejudicial towards Christianity in a way that it is not towards non-Christian faiths (on the grounds of political correctness and respect for minorities), perhaps it is after all possible to view this as the action of a ‘Christian’ organisation. This would be in the broad sense that our secular liberal culture nevertheless views itself as more Christian with respect to religion and the origins of liberalism itself than anything else. As an integral part of this ‘secular-Christian’ culture, precisely, it is held that more definite, doctrinal Christian beliefs and opinions belong to the private domain and should not be ‘imposed’ on other people in public situations where they have a reasonable right not to be confronted by those opinions. Hence, the public representative of an organisation which does symbolise modern Britain, whether it wants to or not, should not use her role to testify to her Christian faith; whereas no one would object to her doing so in a church meeting, at home or in a non-public-facing work role.

In this way, it is maybe ironically because Christianity continues to occupy a privileged place in the beliefs and culture of modern Britain that Ms Eweida’s stance was viewed as an abuse of privilege and of the unspoken cultural code that requires a separation of religious expression from public life that does not apply in the same way to other faiths such as Islam or Sikhism.