Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: We don't yet live in an Islamic republic, so I will say it - I find the veil offensive

A girl in a boob tube and a girl in a hijab are both symbols of unhealthy sexual objectification

Jack Straw's politics usually make me either furious or bilious. That fake sincerity, that oily handshake he extends to "ethnic minorities", his immoral support for the war in Iraq, and the unholy fiefdom he runs in Blackburn - the list is long. Suddenly the expedient appeaser has come out against the veil and I find myself agreeing with his every word. It is time to speak out against this objectionable garment and face down the Islamicists .

Straw has been denounced as Islamophobic by these ideologues who have reverted to what they do best, group blackmail. Just as reactionary have been the views of feminist white women who attack Straw for being aggressively proscriptive. As a man, they say, he has no business telling women what to wear. As an MP, I say, he has an obligation to express his concerns to his constituents. We don't yet live in an Islamic republic where men and women are forced to live on separate planets.

Millions of Muslims in Europe abhor these obscurantists for the way in which they have brainwashed young women to seek subjugation. It breaks our hearts. After all, caged creatures often prefer to stay in their cages even after they have been freed. I don't call that a choice.

A liberal nation has no obligation to extend its liberalism to condone the most illiberal practices, as long as it ensures genuine equal standards for all. Much of Europe still treats Muslims as undeserving inferiors, as underdogs, Muslims are victimised, feared, hated and excluded. Our own government has not tackled the racism or the disadvantages. Instead it blames us for failing to stop terrorism. The media lurches drunkenly between pandering to Muslim separatists and maligning us all as the aliens within. It is hard to be a Muslim today. And it becomes harder still when some choose deliberately to act and dress as aliens.

The young women in niqab who claim they have made the decision without coercion understand nothing about the sacred Islamic texts, the struggles for gender equality, the history or the unpleasantly sexual symbolism of what they claim is just one more lifestyle choice. "Oh, I won't have that green coat, think it is the black shroud for me. Suits me better, don't you think?"

Britons who support them are clueless about the silent march of Wahabism. I have been uncomfortable for years about the rapid spread of the hijab, too, because for Islamicist puritans it is the first staging post on a road map that leads to the burqa, where even the eyes are gauzed over. Some young hijab wearers say they feel wanton and must go "higher" to the niqab. So when does this country decide that it does not want citizens using their freedoms to build a satellite Saudi Arabia here?

We can't answer that question, because Islamicists say we are not allowed such national conversations. Straw isn't allowed because he is a white man; Parliament can't because there is no Muslim woman MP in it; I'm not allowed because I am a bad Muslim. Well, stuff that, I say. This garment offends me, and here are my reasons why.

The sacred texts have no specific injunctions about covering the hair or face. The veil predates Islam and was common among the Assyrian royalty, Byzantine upper-class Christians, and Bedouins - men and women- when sandstorms blasted their faces. Women from the Prophet's family covered themselves, it is said, to prevent harassment from petitioners. The son of Umar, a companion to Prophet Mohamed, asked his wife to veil her face. She replied: "Since the almighty has put upon me the stamp of beauty, it is my wish that the public should view this beauty and recognise this Grace unto them." Nice one, lady, and my views exactly.

In the 10th century, veils were imposed across the Middle East to diminish the status of women. Female chastity and "honour" became jealously guarded. The customs never spread far. You don't find the niqab in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand. A witness account in Turkey in the 14th century noted that women's faces there were always visible. In 1899, a Muslim writer, Quasim Amin, wrote a treatise, "The Emancipation of Woman", in which he proved that the veil was not an inviolable part of revealed Islam. His ideas incensed conformist Muslim women, who attacked his gender, not his arguments, just as now. He inspired secularists like Ataturk in Turkey and the Shah of Iran who, too dictatorially, forbade the veil.

The Iranian revolution turned that into a cause, and the modern re-covering of women, voluntary and imposed, took off. In Iran, educated women who fail stringent veil tests are imprisoned by their theocratic oppressors. They are branded whores and beaten. It is happening in Iraq, Palestine and Algeria too. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are back pushing girls and women back into the home and full burqa. Instead of expressing solidarity with these females, sanctimonious British niqabis are siding with their foes.

Exiles from these regimes who fled to the West now find the evil has followed them. As Saba, a lawyer from Saudi Arabia, said to me: "The Koran does not ask us to bury ourselves. We must be modest. These fools who are taking niqab will one day suffocate like I did, but they will not be allowed to leave the coffin. They are choosing something they don't even understand."

The sexual signals of the hijab and niqab are even more suspect. These coverings are physical manifestations of the pernicious idea of women as carriers of Original Sin, whose faces or hair turn Muslim men into predators. In Denmark, a mufti said unveiled women asked for rape. As if to order, rape by Muslim men of white women is rising alarmingly. In truth, half-naked women and veiled women are both solely defined by sexuality. One group proffers it, the other withholds it. A young girl in a boob tube and a young girl in a hijab are both symbols of unhealthy sexual objectification. Western culture is wildly sexualised and lacking in restraint, but there are ways to avoid falling into that pit, and the veil is not one of them

The niqab expunges the female Muslim presence from the landscape and hands the world over to men. It rejects human commonalities and even the membership of society itself. The women can observe their fellow citizens but remain unseen, like CCTV cameras. They dehumanise themselves and us.

There are practical issues too. I have seen appallingly beaten Muslim women forced into the niqab to keep their wounds hidden. Veiled women cannot swim in the sea, smile at their babies in parks, feel the sun on their skin.

Women can wear what they want in their homes and streets, but there are societal dress codes. Public and private institutions should have the right to ask citizens to show their faces to get goods and services. Hoodies and crash-helmet wearers already have to. Why should niqab wearers be exempt?

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk