The following is a guest post by the Rev Dr Peter Mullen, Hon. Chaplain of The Freedom Association. 

Does the Foreign Office believe in freedom?

Senior civil servants in the FO have asked their staff to wear Islamic headscarves for a day because, they claim, the headscarf – commonly called the hijab or khimaar - symbolises “liberation, respect and security.” Hijab means a barrier and one might question how the veiling of a woman behind a barrier leads to her liberation. Many women in Iran certainly don’t think the hijab is liberating and, while women in our Foreign Office were wearing the veil for World Hijab Day, Iranian women were risking imprisonment and worse by removing their hijabs in public as a protest against “the institutionalised oppression of women.”