Last week at Prime Minister’s Questions, Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin asked Keir Starmer whether he would consider banning the Muslim face veil “in the interests of public safety”. It brought to mind Frantz Fanon’s observation of the “frustration” provoked by “the woman who sees without being seen”. Of course, this isn’t Algeria in the Fifties, where the veil was wielded as a symbol of anti-colonial resistance. Starmer swiftly dismissed the proposal, and the now-resigned Reform chair Zia Yusuf called the question “dumb”.

Coloniser or not, Fanon was right about the frustration that arises in these encounters. There’s a sense of unfairness in exposing your face — being identifiable and accountable — while the other person exempts themselves from that same exposure and scrutiny.

Although most Muslim women don’t wear it, the real significance of the face veil is that it is a public symbol of a growing Muslim presence. And that produces a set of anxieties that have beset Western societies for a while. For example, what does it mean to be British? What are our values? What are the limits of religious freedom? Is Islam compatible with the West?

The state should not enforce a blanket ban on burkas because it is an infringement on religious freedom. Of course, defenders of the ban will say that we restrict covering your face in all sorts of other ways for sensible reasons. You must take off a motorcycle helmet when you enter a shop, for example. There are also public institutions whose core function requires facial visibility. But there is a difference between situational restrictions on private property, or necessary regulations for airports, courts and hospitals; and a blanket ban enforced by the state.

Then there is the fact that some Muslim-majority countries restrict the face veil. If the ban is good enough for Tajikistan, then perhaps it’s good enough for us. But most of those countries are authoritarian regimes that repress civil liberties and personal liberties. Britain is different. Ultimately, freedom of conscience should mean that people should be free to pursue religious observance however they see fit without state interference, even if it seems ridiculous and offensive.

More pragmatically, a ban won’t actually help women within those communities who feel a communal pressure to conform, since they will be the ones who are criminalised and face punishment. To use an analogy, one doesn’t effectively combat sex trafficking by criminalising the prostituted women.

Opposing a blanket ban is only the beginning of the debate regarding the face veil, not the end. It certainly doesn’t mean adopting meek multiculturalist neutrality towards the face veil. Burkas are regressive, misogynistic and anti-social. They erase a woman’s individuality and hold back gender and social integration (which is literally the point of it). Many Muslims themselves object to the face veil as theologically baseless and morally invidious. The idea that women should be hidden from view for reasons of “modesty” or religion is not something society should endorse.

Challenging the face veil involves the task of social integration and cultural change, not state coercion. In other words, this is a matter of civil society. We live in a time when any time there is a social and cultural question at play, it is always demanded that the state solves it, namely by banning something. Ban and whoosh, problem solved.

But it is through civil society, independent of the state, and the conflict of ideas and beliefs within it, that the values emerge which truly shape the society we live in. The obsession with top-down state prescriptions as magic bullets to cultural problems reveals the weakness of our current civil society, and shows us that it needs to be renewed and revitalised to uphold the values that bind us together.

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Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.

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