To look at it, the burqa is simply a veil which covers the body and face – and yet it is also sometimes associated with oppression, terrorism, and extreme religious beliefs. Some burqas only have a mesh screen for the wearer to see through. The niqab, on the other hand, is a face veil worn with a headscarf which leaves the eyes uncovered, while the hijab is a scarf which covers the head and neck. In Europe, the term “burqa” is used to refer to women who wear robes to cover the body and face, but their eyes may be left uncovered, as seen in the main image of this article.
Putting aside the contradiction between laws dictating what women can and cannot wear, human rights issues, and the history of women struggling to have the right to choose their own clothing, the number of Muslim women who wear the burqa alone does not necessitate this fear, nor any expense and time in creating new laws to ban the burqa. [...]
In 2011, France became the first European country to ban the burqa. At the time of legislation in 2011, there were 4.7m Muslims in France, making up 7.4% of the population. As of July 2016, Muslims now account for 7.2% of the French population. Legislative documents supporting the ban reported that 1,900 Muslim women wore the face covering burqa in the country in 2011. This number represented 0.04% of the French Muslim population, and less than 0.003% of the general population of France. [...]
It is almost inconceivable that so much time, effort and cost would be spent bringing in a law that only affected 367 people in a country of over 63m.
The low number of women wearing the burqa in France reflects wider European estimates of Muslim women who cover their faces, where figures are either correspondingly low, or so low as to be impossible to record.
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