How the burqa spoiled the party

Condemned as “sinister, frightening, misogynistic and oppressive”, nothing “seems to provoke more suspicion of Europe's 15 million Muslims than the face veil worn by a tiny minority of women,” writes Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman. In the wake of the 29 April ban in Belgium, and the 28 May municipal ban in Lérida, Spain, on the wearing of the full face veil in public, the London weekly’s political editor wonders why “the Continent’s political leaders, confronted by economic and social malaise, declared war on a piece of cloth?” With France, Italy and the Netherlands considering similar legislation, Hasan argues that such bans will most likely “poison relations between Muslims and non-Muslims even further”. As British Muslim writer Fareena Alam has observed, “the controversy over the veil has more to do with Europe's own identity crisis than with the presence of some 'dangerous other'. At a time when post-communist, secular, democratic Europe was supposed to have been ascendant, playing its decisive role at the end of history, Islam came and spoiled the party."