With the recent increase of women in full niqabs that I have been seeing, it is worth noting that Islam doesn’t require women to wear the niqab or burqa.  That practice is cultural in origin, not religious:

Nowhere in Islam’s transcendent text is there any compulsion for women to conceal their faces. Indeed, this pre-Islamic practice is non-Qur’anic and un-Muslim. It is an archaic aristocratic custom originating in ancient Persia that spread to Byzantium and was adopted by misogynistic Muslim society. For Muslims to claim that the niqab/burka is Islamic is not only deceitful but disingenuous. At best it is an outmoded cultural convention and a primitive tribal habit. Many ill-informed Muslims have, however, been conditioned to conflate culture with religion and befuddle liberal Britain that this is a principle of religious freedom and human rights when it is neither. In fact it is illegal for masked women to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca or to perform their daily prayers. If women are prevented from hiding their identity at Islam’s holiest shrine, why do they need to do so in the UK?
For theological, political, security, social and health reasons, the UK must join France and Belgium in outlawing all public anonymity. Anything less would be tantamount to sexist discrimination against British men, who are not permitted to conceal their identity in public.

Imam Dr T. Hargey
Director, Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford