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A ‘boom’ in burqa sales according to Express ‘snap survey’

A ‘boom’ in burqa sales according to Express ‘snap survey’

Categories: Latest News

Thursday April 07 2016

The Daily Express gets back on its favourite hobby horse: the burqa and niqab with an article in today’s paper showing the results of the paper’s ‘snap survey’ in Blackburn which it claims is evidence of a ‘Burka sales BOOM’.

The ‘snap survey’, it transpires, is an interview with a single shop owner selling Islamic dress and conversations with 20 women “wearing either a burka or a niqab” in Blackburn, the “UK town with third largest Muslim population”.

One would think that with a local Muslim population size in Blackburn of 38,887 a sample of more than 21 people would be used to generalise about whether there has been a “boom” in sales of the burqa.

The Daily Express goes on to suggest that “[W]hile their popularity in many Middle Eastern countries is on the wane the number of women wearing burkas and niqabs on the streets of British northern towns and cities and parts of London is increasing.”

Could this perhaps be because in the UK we live by the very ‘British values’ the paper is so keen to see Muslims adopt, including the right to religious freedom and tolerance of those from other faiths or none?

The burqa and niqab has been a recurring theme in the paper’s output lately with no less than four articles appearing on the paper’s online website on 11 March. The paper’s headline piece was about its “battle to ban the Burka in Britain” being “handed a huge boost today after a whopping 97 per cent of Express.co.uk readers urged the Government to take action.”

The Daily Express certainly has form on anti-Muslim output with the book, Pointing the Finger, illustrating the paper’s false claim about Christmas being “banned” because “it offends Muslims”. Although, a cursory look at other outrageous headlines, such as “Muslim plot to kill Pope“; “Muslims force pool cover-up” and “Muslims tell British: go to hell” reveals that its prejudicial output extends to more than just how Muslim women in the UK choose to dress.

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