FREEDOM
The question is not veil or not veil, the real question is: Is everybody in a country, everybody on this planet, FREE to wear whatever he or she wants (complete veiling and complete nakedness being the two rather rare extremes) while being completely accepted? It’s the quantity and quality of Freedom we’re looking for, not some dress code that might or might also not be an external symbol for a movement (whatever movement, Ku-Klux-Klan, Red Cross, Waffen-SS, orthodox jew, Sans-culottes, moslem…) and its values/value-meme.

Again: what we are all – all citizens of this planet – looking for is freedom. Freedom to live our life in the way to be happy and content. And as long as nobody is limiting the freedom of anybody else by wearing the clothes of his/her choice, everybody of us should be allowed to do so. This includes wearing a Niqab or a Burqa during times of private life. On private and public ground.

EXCEPTIONS
Exceptions have to be made in professional life or in official situations. For example a state officer has to be able to identify the person he/she is talking to. You cannot issue a passport to a person you can't identify. Also politicians or people in public positions like police officers or people that deal professionally with clients should respectfully go unveiled. Because People have a right to know who is talking to them and taking decisions in their names (democracy) or interest (doctors for example), who they're dealing with. Also in security risk situations one must (not may, must!) dress appropriately: for example when crossing borders of countries one has to unveil (complete head unveiled, the original hair open or at least the «hair» (wig, artificial teeth, artificial limb etc.) you wear usually each day) or put a minimum of clothes on (at least a bathing suit but with some respect for other people it should be more, a short, a top, some pair of shoes I propose) and also when a dress code could harm people, for example during sports…

If one should decide to go to the extremes and wear a burqa or nothing at all, that person has to take full responsibility towards society and show more respect to people and be more mindful and careful about certain situations than others. This includes for example, that extremes can only demand respect for their values if they respect other extremes as well. So – as paradoxical as it might seem at first sight – someone in a burqa has no right at all to refuse a vacant seat to someone naked in public transport and the other way round of course while, at the same time, more respect is owed to less extreme citizens. That should be accepted and normal.

I do not condone the somewhat subliminal, slightly depressive face expression of the women in the illustration above much in the same way I do not condone the often played naÏveté of certain extreme moslems when talking about this topic.

OPRESSION
However: an external symbol could maybe be a sign of lack of that freedom. In regard to this lack of freedom it has then to be questioned. But not otherwise.

If the women in the picture above naturally accept lightly dressed people – say in a western style swimsuit – as their seat neighbor in a tramway for example (but only then) they have all right to demand Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité.