The ethics of banning the niqab in Europe: Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the UAE-funded Arab Gulf States Institute thinktank in Washington, penned an entry back in 2010 in his personal blog where he debated the merits of a proposed niqab ban throughout Belgium, which since passed into law in 2011 following a similar ban in France. Ibish’s post remains just as relevant today, as more principalities around the world ban the niqab on the local level while most of the Muslim world (with the exception of Egypt) moves in the opposite direction, lifting previous bans on the hijab and niqab in public institutions. Just yesterday, a Muslim woman asleep on the beach in Cannes wearing a burqini was ordered by four armed police officers to remove the garment on the spot, inspiring what may be for the first time in history something remotely approaching an interesting exchange of comments on the story in the otherwise unreadable tabloid the Daily Mail. Out of 2,400 comments posted thus far, the two top-rated read: “Funny how these rules on ‘modesty’ never seem to apply to the men,” and “This garment causes fear and resentment amongst French people who have suffered at the hands of extremists.”

Ibish’s conflicted feelings on the matter reflect what many of us may feel: “One instinctive reaction is to rally to the defense of a small, beleaguered minority in the name of freedom of religion and expression… There is, however, a second instinctive reaction, which is to recoil at the idea that women are in a sense walling themselves off from others in societies that do not expect women to spend most of their time behind closed doors… All the pseudo-feminist arguments about agency aside, it’s impossible for me not to see the burqa and niqab as expressions of a cultural sensibility that is fundamentally oppressive towards women and that cannot but restrict and impede their social engagement.” (Read Banning the burqa in Belgium and beyond)