This isn't about whether we think wearing burqas or niqabs is a good idea or not. The issue is whether a government should be able to impose its notion of national identity on its citizens

France has now officially outlawed the Islamic niqab or burqa in public. Where's the liberté in that?

The debate on the merits of the face veil must come from within the religion, not imposed from without. When European governments inject themselves in...

By Elizabeth Bryant Religion News Service PARIS (RNS) Belgium is poised to become Europe's first country to ban the face-covering Islamic veil, after...

It is easy to see how the "burqa ban" might be misused as a part of a broader effort to stigmatize a religious population, one that already perceives itself to be on the margins of society.

Fakih will be wielded as a weapon to tell women what they're wearing is wrong. For far too long, women -- or women reduced to their bodies -- have been the fields on which ideas, identities, and now corporations do battle.

At the risk of estranging my humanist and feminist friends and readers, I have to stand against the banning of the burqa not just out of respect for liberty, but also for the second reason: it could hurt women more than help them.