As a Muslim woman, I’d like to thank Boris Johnson for calling out the niqab

As a Muslim woman observing Islam, I am fully supportive of Boris Johnson’s rejection of the niqab. And I wonder how many of the former Foreign Secretary’s critics understand my religion, what this form of dress represents and the subjugation it implies. To defend the niqab and to defend Muslim women are, I can assure you, two very different things indeed.

Growing up Muslim in Britain, not once was I compelled to cover my hair. This changed when I moved to Saudi Arabia to practice medicine. Arriving in the Kingdom, by Saudi Arabia’s Sharia law, I could not go out into public without concealing my entire body, save face and hands, in a flowing, black abayya. This was my first experience of enforced veiling. And my last.

But even there, in the pre-9/11 Saudi Kingdom, the epicenter of Islam, the niqab (which covers most of the face) was not adopted by most women.