London: As the veil controversy raged in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday that the garment was a "mark of separation" and makes people from the outside community feel uncomfortable.
Supporting the decision of the local education authority to suspend a Muslim woman teacher for refusing to remove her veil in school, Blair said the issue reflected the need for a wider debate about community integration.
"The veil is a mark of separation and that's why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable... Now no one wants to say that people don't have the right to do it. I mean that's to take it too far," Blair told reporters at his monthly conference.
He admitted that it was a sensitive issue, but said all evidence showed that ''when people do integrate more, they achieve more as well. There is a reason why minority communities that have integrated well, then end up doing better, achieving more, attaining more.''
"I fully support the way the authority dealt with Aishah Azmi at Headfield Church of England Junior School, in Dewsbury," he said.
This should be just one issue in a broader debate about "the relationship between our society and how the Muslim community integrates with our society.
"There's a second issue which is about Islam itself and how Islam comes to terms with and is comfortable with the modern world," he said, adding this also includes people being allowed to have a "distinctive identity.
The controversy over Muslim women wearing veils was sparked two weeks ago by Commons' leader Jack Straw when he said he had asked Muslim women to remove veils while visiting him at his Blackburn constituency office.
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