Lawyers 'can wear veils in court' [UK]

Legal advisers and solicitors may wear the Islamic veil in court unless it interferes with the "interests of justice", judges have been told.

The judiciary were told to use their discretion to interpret the temporary guidance, which covers all courts.

The advice was issued by immigration tribunals chief Mr Justice Hodge after a case had to be halted when a legal adviser refused to remove her veil.

Earlier this week it emerged legal adviser Shabnam Mughal had refused to remove her headwear during an immigration tribunal in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

She had been asked to do so by Judge George Glossop, who said he could not hear her properly.

Eventually Judge Glossop adjourned the hearing to seek advice from president of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) Mr Justice Hodge.

It is understood the hearing will now go ahead next week with a different judge presiding.

Last month teaching assistant Aishah Azmi, 23, lost an employment tribunal case after being suspended from her position at a school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, for refusing to remove her veil in class.

Issuing the interim guidance on Thursday, Mr Justice Hodge said: "Immigration judges must exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis where a representative wishes to wear a veil.

"The presumption is that if a representative before an AIT tribunal wishes to wear a veil, has the agreement of his or her client and can be heard reasonably clearly by all parties to the proceedings, then the representative should be allowed to do so.

"If a judge or other party to the proceedings is unable to hear the representative clearly then the interests of justice are not served and other arrangements will need to be made.

"Such arrangements will vary from case to case, subject to judicial discretion and the interests of all parties."

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers said he had asked the equal treatment advisory committee of the Judicial Studies Board to develop detailed guidance on the use of veils by all people involved in court cases - including the parties, legal representatives, witnesses, jurors and magistrates.

Legal advisers and solicitors

The bottom feeders of the British legal profession. Pay them no mind. They are not allowed into all but the lowest courts, for the mundane, except for a handful, that run the very arduous traps to be allowed into the higher courts. Barristers are a breed apart.

<< Churchill is spinning in his grave. >>

As is Britain's only truly "home-grown" twentieth century statesman, (Mr Jerome Churchill being essentially, effectively, to all intents and purposes and when it mattered, American) that giant among the ever-more mongrelized pygmies over whom he towered, Doctor Enoch Powell.

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine‹must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"... the influence of (Mohammedism) paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

"No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is militant and proselytizing. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome." -- Winston S. Jerome Churchill

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