Expressions of Opposition To The Tone of The Debate
- John Denham MP said that the debate was "flawed" as the government appeared to be "grandstanding" for the sake of the majority rather than actually listening to the Muslim minority.
- Writing in the Edinburgh Middle East Report, a journal on Islamic and Middle Eastern affairs, Jess McConnell, Islam Editor, suggested that the entire debate was the result of "media speculation" and cited Yemenis' increasingly liberal attitudes towards the veil as proof of the debate's superficiality.
- Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said "I think it's right for him to say 'would you mind not making me feel uncomfortable' in this case, as long as it is clearly understood the answer to that can be 'no'." He later followed up these comments by saying that he feared that the debate "could be the trigger for the grim spiral that produced riots in the north of England five years ago". He said that the debate "seems to have turned into something really quite ugly", adding, "we need to have this conversation but there are rules by which we have the conversation which don't involve this kind of targeting and frankly bullying."
- A number of individuals, including India Knight, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone, compared the plight of Jews in 1930s Britain with that of contemporary British Muslims, especially in light of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street.
- Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne said that the debate included "the nastiest and most irresponsible politics I have seen from a mainstream political party in my life, and we will all pay a horrible price for such cynical opportunism" as it will "encourage extremism, whether from white supremacist parties like the BNP or within Islam itself".
Read more about this topic: British Debate Over Veils
Famous quotes containing the words expressions of, expressions, opposition, tone and/or debate:
“Let it be signified to me through any channel ... that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.
...penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his majesty that we are asking favors and not rights.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people’s, preserve dignity.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)