Is Cambridge University being tremulous or truly multicultural? It will allow women to wear the burqa below their mortar boards during graduation. The university authorities have said that they “absolutely respect” the students’ cultural or religious obligations, and certain items of national dress, military uniform and religious apparel can be worn during formal presentations. This includes the burqa. No decision regarding the burqa can be unself-conscious: too much water has flowed under Western bridges for that. The university had objected to the students’ tendency to wear casual clothes to academic ceremonies, and had insisted on the traditional black and white. The statement allowing people to wear uniforms and burqas may be a clarification, but it may also be a tactful retreat.

Religion and culture may demand many things; but what does multiculturalism demand? What does it mean, and what does it aim at? The former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, made no bones about what he thought it meant: integration at the cost of erasing signs of difference. He wanted women to take off their burqas because those signified separation and difference. Across the channel, Nicolas Sarkozy, president of a country less vociferously hung up on multiculturalism than Britain, thinks burqas are a “sign of subservience”. The French State has banned all religious symbols, including burqas, from schools. France obviously feels that it must forcibly “help” Muslim women come out of “subservience” — and so redefine the State’s duties and authority. In some parts of Germany, teachers cannot wear headscarves. And in Holland’s pre-election battle, the leading party in the current coalition government is promising to ban the burqa in public places because its obscuring of identity is a security risk. The ban would — logically — include ski masks and full-face helmets, just as allowing it in Cambridge logically brings in military uniform and national dress. What do the women in burqas think?