By Ion London

Yesterday I moved back to London after more than ten years away. It felt good to be back in the capital. I like the energy of it.

Disembarking at Paddington Station I headed east, turning into Edgware Road and ‘Little Beirut’, where Arab men pass the day reading Arabic newspapers in shisha cafés whilst black-clad wives flurry about with kids and shopping, like clouds of terrestrial bats.

Stopping off in a Costa café, I ordered a drink, then went to sit by the window. Outside was a Big Issue seller: “Issue, Big Issue anyone?” he repeated at half-minute intervals.

Entering the café after me, a bearded young man was accompanied, or rather followed, by one of the bat-women: his “beautiful fiancée”, as it turned out, though I couldn’t verify the claim because she was completely covered up, save for a narrow eye slit.

With obvious pride, the young man proceeded to introduce her to his friends in the café. It was bizarre, for the fiancée neither spoke, nor shook hands, nor gestured, nor nodded her head. And participating in this shameless charade, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, was an Englishwoman.

Whereas bats have ultra-sensitive ears, burqa wearing bat-women must have ultra-expressive eyebrows, because the eyes and eyebrows alone – the only visible features – must communicate everything. Anger and sorrow, joy and pain, “What do we need from Argos?” and (most likely) “I’m bored out of my skull, if you love me why can’t you treat me as an equal, you medieval jerk.”

In such situations, one is tempted to go up to the woman, take her hand, say “Nice to see you, you look wonderful!” and maybe make a joke or two. But of course it wouldn’t do you (or more importantly, her) any good at all.

So I kept quiet and just stared at them with a mildly contemptuous look.

Meanwhile outside, the man with the Big Issues was becoming quite desperate: “Will somebody please acknowledge me?” he wailed, as the crowds passed by, oblivious.

He might as well have been speaking for the woman in the burqa and countless others like her who live trapped and stunted lives, compelled to hide their faces from the world, denied opportunities to grow as individuals or to experience life in all its richness.

It’s not just a question of banning the burqa, though the British Freedom Party strongly favours that. It’s also about educating men who, despite their superficial urbanity, still think like the camel-slapping tent-dwellers they’re descended from.

All immigrants and minorities must be told directly that here, in twenty-first century Britain, serfdom and slavery cannot and will not be tolerated (regardless of what religious leaders might say). They must be told that slave-owners will face conviction and punishment, that slaves will be freed, granted protection under the law, and given access to education and work so that they can participate fully in national life.

It seems to me ironic that liberals like the Englishwoman in the coffee shop, though they never tire of browbeating us about Britain’s slave-owning past, seem blind to Britain’s slave-owning, Muslim present.

Nonie Darwish, a Christian convert from Islam and occasional contributor to the British Freedom website (see here and here) knows better than most what life is really like for many women under Islam. Her video below should be compulsory viewing for all naïve, Islamophilic liberals.