Finally, it is argued that the burka's unacceptable harm is to the veiled women themselves. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, a vice president of the European Parliament, says the burka is "a mobile prison." And the claim is often made that women are compelled to veil themselves by fathers or husbands.

Again, I start with sympathy for this view. John Stuart Mill, who enunciated the liberal's classic "harm principle," was himself passionate against "the almost despotic power of husbands over wives." But shouldn't we ask the women themselves?

A study by the Open Society Foundations, to be released Monday, reports in-depth interviews with 32 women who wear the full-face veil in France. All but two say they are the first members of their family to do so, and almost all insist this was a matter of free personal choice. Several chose to wear it against the initial resistance of husbands, fathers and mothers. (The families often feared hostility on the streets.)

These women often describe donning the niqab or burka as part of a spiritual journey. Some also explain it as a protest and defense against a highly sexualized, voyeuristic public space: "For us it's a way of saying that we are not a piece of meat in a stall, we are not a commodity." (Vivi, 39, South of France.)

We may not like their choice. We may find it disturbing and offensive. But it is, in its way, as much a form of free expression as cartoons of Mohammad, which these women, in turn, will find disturbing and offensive. And that's the deal in a free society: The burka wearer has to put up with the cartoons; the cartoonist has to put up with the burkas.

Yes, there surely are also cases of women who wear the burka or the niqab out of fear of their menfolk. Every possible resource must be put at their disposal: anonymous help lines, community support, safe houses, fresh-start chances. They, too, must be free to choose. But how will a burka ban help them? Will not the reaction of such tyrannical men be to keep them even more tightly locked up at home?

Because one is so liable to be maliciously misinterpreted on this subject, I want to be very clear about where I stand. I think there are huge problems with the integration of people of migrant background and Muslim faith into most west European societies. We have made bad mistakes of omission and commission in this regard over the last 40 years, some of them in the name of a misconceived, morally relativist multiculturalism. We need a muscular liberalism fit for what are in reality already multicultural societies.

But let us, in the name of reason and common sense, concentrate on what is really vital. Let us defend free speech against violent Islamist intimidation. Let us ensure that children of migrant background get a good education in the language, history and politics of the European country in which they live and are equipped to do useful work and contribute fully as citizens. Let us not be distracted by a facile gesture politics, which legitimates far-right xenophobes even as it attempts to claw back their votes.

The burka ban is illiberal, unnecessary and will most likely be counterproductive. No one else should follow the French example, and France itself should reverse it.

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