The Spectator’s Notes | 16 April 2011

The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’.

The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’. If it is justified — I would rather hesitantly argue that it is — it is solely because the veil hides identity. Common citizenship involves trust, and trust cannot exist where one cannot see people’s faces in public. Obviously there can be necessary functional reasons for concealment — surgical masks, beekeepers’ helmets, extremes of cold — but concealment in normal circumstances in an open society amounts to a hostile act. I have often seen this, in extreme form, on the hunting field, when saboteurs advance on riders and foot-followers wearing masks. Sometimes this prevents convictions for serious assaults because the wearers cannot be identified, but even where no injury is caused the concealment of the face is itself a form of menace.