… the European Court of Human Rights has winner written all over it.
The application states the principal applicant is the husband who “expects and instructs” his wife to wear the burqa, a full-body covering that includes a mesh over the face, as well as the niqab, a face veil that only leaves an opening for the eyes.
But he will be at risk of prosecution under French law if he crosses the Channel because he will admit that “he expects and instructs his wife to wear the niqab/burqa”.
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UPDATE:
When I see a woman in a burqa, my feelings are of revulsion. Not of the women themselves, of course, but of the culture and the men who require this of them. Not only do I want to set them free, I want to protect my own daughter from the sight of what appears to me as forced subservience.
Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield describes exactly what happened to UD ten years ago, in Virginia’s Pentagon City Mall, as she walked with her ten-year-old daughter. At the sight of three women in burqas, UD immediately, instinctively, put her hands over her daughter’s eyes.
Greenfield concludes:
It’s time to have an American conversation about the burqa. It will not be the same as a European conversation; it will take into account distinctive American ideals, some of which — like liberty and equality — inevitably conflict. We should not presuppose that the conversation will be simple or have only one possible outcome.