First, let’s review what a burqa is, as it’s often confused with other Muslim garments and even with headscarves. It’s the full-length body covering worn by some Muslim women, and usually includes a head covering with a veil over the eyes, completely obscuring the face. Here are two women wearing the garment:

Three years ago, France banned any face-covering garment in public places, including the burqa if it obscures the face.  That law was controversial, for some Muslims see the garment as a religious mandate and its prohibition infringes on freedom of religion.  Some argue that it’s a form of oppressing women, and I tend to agree; although some burqa wearers argue that they want to wear it, many would gladly wear more revealing dress were it not for their faith and pressure from male and female coreligionists. Indeed, when I visited the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, a few years back—a school that bans even headscarves—several Muslim women told me they were happy about the rule.  If headscarves were permitted, they said, they would be pressured by other Muslim women to conform and wear them, for otherwise they’d be accused of being “bad Muslims.”

The question of banning such garments thus sets freedom of religion squarely against civil law and national custom, and it’s a tough call. I go back and forth on this, but I find myself more often on the side of Christopher Hitchens, who argued in Slate that the French burqa ban was a victory for women’s rights:

Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

. . . Not that it would matter in the least if the Quran said otherwise. Religion is the worst possible excuse for any exception to the common law. Mormons may not have polygamous marriage, female circumcision is a federal crime in this country, and in some states Christian Scientists face prosecution if they neglect their children by denying them medical care. Do we dare lecture the French for declaring simply that all citizens and residents, whatever their confessional allegiance, must be able to recognize one another in the clearest sense of that universal term?

This is relevant to a report in yesterday’s Guardian that a judge in Hackney, near London, refused to let a Muslim woman wear her burqa in court. The woman is standing trial for intimidating a witness, and refuses to remove the head covering in the presence of males. The judge gave a stern ruling:

The judge said the principle of open justice overrode the woman’s religious beliefs. “It is necessary for this court to be satisfied that they can recognise the defendant,” the judge said.

“While I obviously respect the right to dress in any way she wishes, certainly while outside the court, the interests of justice are paramount. I can’t, as a circuit judge, accept a plea from a person whose identity I am unable to ascertain.

“It would be easy for someone on a later occasion to appear and claim to be the defendant. The court would have no way to check on that.”

Both the woman’s lawyer and the prosecuting attorney have broached other solutions to identify the burqa-wearer in court as the real defendant:

[Defense lawyer] Burtwistle suggested that she, a female police officer or a female prison guard could identify the defendant and confirm to the court that it was the same person as in the police arrest photos.

Sarah Counsell, prosecuting, said the police officer in charge of the case was content that he recognised the defendant while she was in the burqa.

But the judge wouldn’t have it:

“It seems to me to be quite fundamental that the court is sure who it is dealing with. Furthermore, this court, as long as I am sitting, has the highest respect for any religious tradition a person has.

“In my courtroom also, this sometimes conflicts with the interests of a paramount need for the administration of justice. In my courtroom, that’s going to come first.

“There is the principle of open justice and it can’t be subject to the religion of the defendant whether the principle is observed or not.

“I am not saying this because of the particular form of dress by this defendant, I apply that to any form of dress that had the same issues.”

Yes, there are ways for other women to identify the defendant, including fingerprinting her in court, but that’s not the point. The point is this: in a court of law, everyone has the right to face their accuser, and not while the accuser is enveloped in a cloth sack. And there’s simply no way to clear the courtroom of males for this:  the judge, after all, is a man. (The issue of the burqa is still undecided, and will be revisited in September when the trial starts.)

In this case, then, I’m completely on the judge’s side. Religious custom, forced upon women or not, must give way to civil law. And burqas that obscure the face should certainly be banned in places where facial recognition is potentially important, as in banks, schools, government offices, and the like.

I’m still undecided about whether face-covering burqas should be completely banned in public. I lean towards the banning because I doubt women would wear them were they not forced to, or were not brainwashed from youth that this is how they must dress. But other forms of religiously-inspired dress, like the garments of the Amish, may be worn under the same compulsion.  Still, that clothing doesn’t obscure one’s identity in public.

What do you think?

h/t: Natalie