REFORM UK MP Danny Kruger has said the party has not reached a conclusion on whether it will support a policy of banning the burka.
Speaking on GB News, he said: “We would expect all Muslims, all citizens, all people living in this country to acknowledge this primary fact that we live under the law of England, of the United Kingdom, and that includes the right to worship any god you choose.
“So people can believe anything they like. But if you’re to live in this country, certainly if you’re to be a citizen, you have to defend the idea of freedom of conscience. And as I say, Christianity is the foundation of that.
“And if we do away with Christianity, as we’ve been doing under the guise of pluralism and tolerance and liberalism, we actually end up partly by admitting faiths that have a completely different attitude to personal freedom.
“And we ultimately end up with a very, very saddened society in which people don’t have a coherent sense of what it is to be human, to live in community with others.
“I think it’s religion that makes the foundation of our society, and Christianity is the religion that has made this country great. And I’m very, very pleased to see Zia [Yusuf] today reiterating that so confidently on behalf of Reform.
“I think it’s unacceptable to have courts that in any way challenge the primacy of the courts of this country. So it’s not acceptable to have courts that in any way set themselves up in opposition to the proper courts of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“And so where they exist and they exercise any sort of jurisdiction that is not acceptable. If people want to have their own, you know, private mediation services, that’s fine.
“I think it is a topic we need to look very closely at. So I’m not going to make commitments now, but I am sure you appreciate that it is an issue that is very important to us.
“We absolutely want to reassert the foundational primacy of the laws of this country, and in order to achieve cohesion and to try and integrate our Muslim citizens successfully into this country, we have to have everybody understanding there’s only one court.
“We are very concerned about the burka and we are looking at how to regulate it in a way that is consistent with personal liberty. So, of course, you’re right that there’s a tension here.
“The traditions of our country are that you can wear what you like. So how we actually go about enforcing what I think is the right principle, that it is not acceptable for, basically, women to be forced through intense cultural pressure to wear the full veil, that’s a principle that we think should be enforced meaningfully.
“How we do it in a way that is consistent with liberty is a genuine tension within our tradition.
“I don’t think you’re being a good Conservative by applying an absolute moral principle here. It’s a question of where the line falls. And I think it’s appropriate and common sense line to draw between obviously encouraging one’s family to conform to the cultural inheritance that you grew up with, and on the other side of the line, absolutely insisting on pain of extreme social or even physical penalties, I’m afraid to say.
“The degree of enforcement of the burqa on women in certain Islamic societies clearly crosses the line in terms of the, I think, inappropriate degree of social pressure that it is being applied.”
