“Telling women what to wear is wrong, so let’s forbid women from wearing burqas!”
—the French government*
We don’t need to know the precise line between what religious freedom ought and ought not allow to know that this is way on the side of “ought to be allowed.” We also don’t need to be legal scholars to recognize that the French laws about “conspicuous religious symbols,” which define what is and isn’t allowed, are designed in a way that permits the overwhelming majority of Christians to go on living exactly as they did before the laws were put into place.**
If someone wants to wear the burqa, they should be allowed to make that choice. If someone does not want to wear the burqa, they should also be allowed to make that choice. The problem with requiring women to wear them, after all, is that they are being deprived of their freedom to choose for themselves. And in that regard, forbidding them is no different. It removes the agency of the wearer and replaces it with the judgment of someone else—something for which there should be a very high bar.
Finally, we should keep in mind that burqas are technically not a religious symbol. They are an item of clothing worn in certain cultures that some religious leaders have decided to require others to wear. But the only thing the Quran requires of men and women regarding clothing is to dress modestly. It does not specify what counts as modest or immodest, which is why not all states that operate under Islamic law require the same types of clothing.***
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* Not their explicit reasoning, of course, but the logical consequence of many arguments in favor of the ban.
** Furthermore, married Jewish women in France are not prevented from covering their hair for religious reasons because the enforcers don’t register their hair coverings as religious.
*** Part of me wants to go to France and walk around in a burqa until someone tries to stop me. Let’s see them tell me with a straight face that I am wearing it as a religious symbol.