Doctor who faces inquiry for asking a Muslim to lift her veil says he will quit after 23 years as a GP due to the 'major injustice' of the investigation

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A GP has revealed he is planning to quit medicine over an investigation by the doctors watchdog into claims he ‘discriminated’ against a Muslim woman for asking her to remove her veil.

Dr Keith Wolverson said he ‘politely’ asked the woman to take off the garment for patient safety reasons during a consultation last year because he was unable to hear her explain her sick daughter’s symptoms.

He was then ‘deeply upset’ when last week he received a letter from the General Medical Council, the professional regulator, informing him that he was subject to an inquiry over allegations of racial discrimination which could result in him being struck off.

Last night, Dr Wolverson, who has practised as a GP for 23 years and has an unblemished record, said regardless of the outcome of the investigation he now plans to leave his job.

He said: ‘I feel a major injustice has taken place. This is why you are waiting so long to see your GP and doctors are leaving in droves. This country will have no doctors left if we continue to treat them in this manner. I’m deeply upset.

‘A doctor’s quest to perform the very finest consultation for the safety of the patient has been misinterpreted in a duplicitous manner to suggest there has been an act of racism committed. I absolutely no longer want to be a doctor.’

Dr Wolverson told how the Muslim woman brought her daughter, aged ten or 11, to see him at a walk-in centre at Royal Stoke University Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, last June.

The mother said she was concerned the child had tonsillitis.

But the 52-year-old GP struggled to hear the mother’s account of the girl’s health problems because her speech was being obscured by her niqab – a garment worn by some Muslim women that covers the body and face apart from the eyes.

The doctor said he ‘politely’ asked the woman to remove the veil covering her face so he could be sure what she was saying.

‘I asked her, would you kindly remove your face veil please because it makes communication very difficult,’ Dr Wolverson explained. ‘Normally this issue doesn’t arise because patients automatically do so.

‘One would think that any parent would be wholly supportive and grateful that a doctor was trying to safely treat their child.’

According to Dr Wolverson, the mother complied with his request without raising any objections.

But half an hour after the consultation, her husband arrived and declared he was making a complaint about the GP’s behaviour.

‘He sat outside my consultation room and threateningly made eye contact towards me whenever I went out to fetch each patient,’ Dr Wolverson said. ‘He then made a formal complaint and I was prevented from working at the walk-in centre again.’

It has since emerged that NHS bosses sent the GMC a form outlining the complaints. It says the woman told the doctor she did not want to remove the veil on religious grounds but he refused to continue the consultation unless she did.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7046077/Doctor-faces-inquiry-asking-Muslim-lift-veil-says-quit-23-years-GP.html

Its not a religious practise its cultural and fairly recent.

Vintage wrote:Its not a religious practise its cultural and fairly recent.

The Religion of Islam wrote:When a small piece of fabric causes such controversy and conflict, wouldn’t it be easier to remove it?  Why then, under such circumstances, do Muslim women wear scarves?

There are a myriad of reasons why, but the easy, one sentence answer is, because they believe God has made it an obligation for believing women.  In the Quran God tells the believing men and women to lower their gaze and to dress modestly.  He (God) specifically addresses women when He asks them not to show off their adornment, except that which is apparent, and draw their veils over their bodies.  (Quran 24:30-31)

These verses of Quran are known as the verses of hijab and it is the consensus of Islamic scholars that they make the wearing of hijab mandatory.  Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar do enforce a dress code.  Women there are expected to cover their hair and wear some sort of loose fitting, full-length garment over their clothes.

https://www.islamreligion.com/articles/2770/why-Muslim-women-wear-veil/

As long as it is religiously based, it can form the basis for religious discrimination.  This is true whether it is mandatory (Saudi Arabia) or elective (Turkey).  It comes from the Quran, and that is a religious text every bit as much as the Holy Bible or the Book of Mormon.

The courts will not adjudicate, nor even enter a controversy over religious doctrine.  To do so is to suggest that the state favors one side over the other.  In the US this violates the Constitution prohibiting establishment of a religion (Establishment Clause).