In a free society, men and women should be able to do, say, write, depict or wear what they like, so long as it does no significant harm to others.

Those who support a burka ban, like the one that goes into effect in France on Monday, must therefore show us the harm that comes from women being in public with their faces covered. So far, the supporters of a ban have advanced three main arguments.

First, they say the full-face veil is a threat to public safety. Jean-Francois Cope, leader of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement, has cited an armed robbery conducted "in the Paris suburbs by criminals dressed in burkas." Others point to would-be suicide bombers hiding under burkas. But how many such incidents have there been? For the London and Madrid bombers, a backpack was an easier hiding place for a bomb. Meanwhile, violent street demonstrators have for decades hidden their faces behind balaclavas, and a nylon stocking over the head has long been the native dress of the armed robber. It is ridiculous to suggest that women who wear the burka (thought to be fewer than 2,000 in France, and fewer than 500 in Holland), suddenly constitute more of a security threat than those muffled and hooded men.

This takes us to the second argument: An open society is one in which we can see each other's faces. I have much sympathy with this view. Most free societies have some rules about how we appear in public: no full nudity, for example, except in some designated locations. If for the last 50 years the uncovered face in public had been the settled legal norm of European societies, as is the covering of the pudenda, it would be reasonable to insist that those who choose to live here should abide by it. But while the French law is now presented in an egalitarian, universalist way, this is so obviously not what it really is.

In 2009, Sarkozy took up with a vengeance the demand to ban burkas. It is being implemented in the context of his party's fierce defense of French-style secularism against the encroachments of Islam. And it is very much about attracting voters back from the xenophobic far right. This is a highly politicized burka ban hiding behind a thin universalist veil.

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