This is well worth your time to read. This answers the question “but it’s a choice.”
A gang of jewel thieves dressed in burqas made off with $265,000-worth of gems and $98,000 in cash from a store in the UK. The gang hid machetes and sledge hammers under their voluminous garments and didn’t hesitate to use them to hatchet those that got in their way. The gang managed to rob 10 stores over a 12-month period before they were finally caught and jailed.
Laws banning burqas have been enacted in 13 countries worldwide, ranging from Austria and France to Tajikistan and Cameroon. While non-Western countries had little problem banning the garment for security reasons, Western countries – which face the same type of threats – fell into the mire of political correctness over attempts to forbid the wearing of face coverings in public.
Take the most recent example in Denmark. As such legislation was about to go into effect, hundreds of left-wing (mostly non-Muslim) Danes took to the streets, accusing the government of denying a woman’s right to dress as she wants – a supremely ironic take on burqa wearing considering that given the choice, it is probably safe to say that many if not most women would relish freeing themselves from the oppressive and claustrophobic garment.
(Witness the reaction of women in Iraq and Afghanistan when ISIS and the Taliban, respectively, forced women to wear burqas. When these extremist forces were defeated, women made videos of themselves celebrating their liberation from and burning what they viewed as a vile garment — an oppressive infringement on their freedom and femininity.)
Yet, in making moves to ban the burqa, Western countries and their politicians continue to fall into the trap of cultural relativism: Politicians on the Right speak of upholding “secular and democratic values”; those on the Left cry discrimination and Islamophobia.
This gets particularly sticky when it comes to the exercise of the European idea of human rights — namely, freedom of religion. Although in Europe, freedom of belief is protected, the freedom to exercise one’s beliefs in the public sphere is murky.