Gloves off

For many Britons, however, Patel8217;s withdrawal behind her veil makes her anything but invisible.

The Muslim veil, or niqab, has come under question in the last few weeks from British Cabinet ministers, judges and even Prime Minister Tony Blair, who described it as 8220;a mark of separation8221;. Increasingly, Patel and others find themselves under physical and verbal threat for a style of dress they regard as an essential expression of piety and modesty.

Not long after former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly called for examining the wearing of veils, Patel walked into a shop to buy a chocolate bar.

8220;The guy said, 8216;I8217;m not going to sell it to you unless I can see you.8217; I said, 8216;Stuff your chocolate!8217; And I know 8212; he wouldn8217;t have said that if Jack Straw hadn8217;t said it first.8221;

France and Turkey have banned head scarves, or hijab, in public schools, and the Dutch government this month sought to ban the niqab and burqa in public. Britain has always tolerated a variety of styles of Muslim dress and has made no attempt to regulate head scarves. The veil, however, has already been restricted at a few schools and hospitals.

Many Muslims fear that Straw8217;s remarks could be an indication that regulation of even head scarves might be on the way. 8220;A lot of practicing Muslims feel very much that a lot of people in power are not happy with us being part of this country, and this culture, on our terms. Constantly, the media is saying Muslims need to compromise, and basically secularise,8221; said Eman Penny, 29, of Kingston upon Thames, a clinical psychologist who is a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Protect-Hijab.

Penny, who wears the full niqab only occasionally, said the debate has made confronting veiled women politically correct.

8220;It seems like it8217;s kind of okay for people to say, 8216;I8217;m not comfortable with this; would you mind taking that off?8217;8221; she said. 8220;People say it8217;s not in tune with 8216;British values8217;, but they can8217;t say what they are.8221;

The veil issue is one of many that have accompanied Britain8217;s transformation from a mainly white, Christian nation to a true multicultural stew. Large waves of immigrants from South Asia over the last half a century have created a growing generation of native-born Muslims, many of whom are even more rigorous than their parents in religious practice.

In the newspaper column that started the current controversy, Straw wrote in the Lancashire Telegraph, his hometown paper, that he had begun asking veiled women to remove their face coverings during visits to his office.

Straw, who is now leader of the House of Commons, said he had begun to think after his encounters with veiled women about 8220;the apparent incongruity between the signals which indicate common bonds 8212; the entirely English accent, the 8230; education 8212; and the fact of the veil.8221;

8220;Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone 8216;face to face8217; who I could not see,8221; he said.

Since then, Muslim organisations have reported an increase in physical attacks against women wearing veils.

Patel has already faced frightening confrontations. In the first, not long after the 9/11 attacks, she was surrounded by a group of white youths as she was leaving the university. They began kicking and punching her, shouting, 8220;Where is Osama bin Laden?8221; and other hostile remarks. She was hospitalised with heavily bruised ribs and a concussion.

Then shortly after the London transit bombings in July 2005, Patel said, she was again surrounded by a group of boys, who pushed her back and forth across the circle they had formed and finally shoved her to the ground, breaking her knee.

A month later, she was driving with her sister in East London. Her sister was wearing a head scarf, Patel a full veil. An oncoming car blocked their progress down a narrow street, and five boys leaped out and surrounded the car. The young women quickly locked the doors, she said, but the boys began pouring gasoline on the vehicle.

A bystander ran indoors to where a Muslim family was having a party, and a large group of men ran into the street and fell on the five boys, she said. The police arrived about 20 minutes later, Patel said, 8220;but by then the guys had been dealt with8221;.

Patel, whose parents were born in India, said it was wrong to argue that the veil stood in the way of integration or a genuinely multicultural society.

8220;I can tell you, I am severely integrated into this society,8221; she said. 8220;I work in a university. All the men and women at the university know me on a personal level. I8217;ve lectured at that university to people from all over the world. How is that not integration?8221; she said.

Straw is a member of the liberal Labour Party, the political force that probably is the most accommodating to immigration and multiculturalism in Britain. It seemed advisable that if someone was going to raise the veil issue, said Phil Riley, the party8217;s secretary in Straw8217;s hometown, it ought to be Labour.

8220;One of the problems is if mainstream politicians don8217;t talk about things, then the extremists do,8221; he said. 8220;It ought to be that people can have a conversation about things like this without becoming neo-Nazis.8221;

In Blackburn, the small former cotton milling town in northern England that is Straw8217;s hometown, a wave of immigration from India and Pakistan in the 1950s has resulted in a population that is about 25 percent Muslim. Yet interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims 8220;has been fairly limited,8221; Riley said.

He said the number of women wearing the niqab has increased to 8220;spookily really significant numbers8221; since 9/11, most of them young, Blackburn-born and British-educated.

8220;All my views about integration would have said to me that the development of a process of self-segregation is an odd thing for Blackburn-educated women to do 8230; and that8217;s what it is. There8217;s nothing about the veil that makes any indication that those women want to converse with anybody,8221; Riley said.

8220;The best one can say is it8217;s not a hugely socializing garment. You just have a pair of eyes staring at you.8221;