Coming on the heels of the controversy sparked by former British foreign secretary Jack Straw’s absurd remarks on the Muslim veil, Aishah Azmi’s case has come to challenge Britain’s famed traditions of religious tolerance and multiculturalism. For ages, persecuted and freedom-loving people from around the world have headed to Britain seeing it as a land of freedom, peace and opportunity. It was rightly celebrated as the most liberal and tolerant country in the whole of Europe.

But the very fact that Britain should be debating whether Muslim women can practise their religion, shows that the country is undergoing an alarming change, with the rest of the West.

The far from liberal remarks made by Woolas and before him by Jack Straw are a clear sign that the freedom once enjoyed by religious and cultural minorities in Britain may not last long. If this is how senior leaders of the left-wing Labour party view the country’s largest minority, it is not hard to imagine the possible reaction of right-wing fringe groups such as UKIP.

It is not as if Straw does not understand the larger issue of Muslim identity and why Muslim women wear hijab or cover their face. After all, there is a large concentration of Muslim community in his Blackburn constituency and until this controversy, the British Muslims saw their member of parliament as being largely sympathetic to them, despite their resentment over the government’s Iraq policy.

Besides, what is secularism, the cornerstone of Western democracy, if not non-interference with individuals’ religious beliefs and cultural practices? If some Muslim women choose to wear the veil, how does it affect their relationship with the state or the society at large? Or for that matter, why should governments, ministers or society get all worked up over an individual’s religious beliefs or cultural practices, unless they affect public peace or order in the country?

How is it anybody’s business, if Aishah Azmi wears veil in her school in the presence of her male colleagues? As she has sensibly pointed out in her defence, her students have never complained about her Muslim veil coming in the way of her communication with them. Why are Blair’s ministers — and with them the rest of Europe — getting so worked up then?