The Niqab as a Power Play

Farzana Hassan thinks the niqab-empowers-women palaver is a bunch of crap--and part of a larger agenda:

Many women who are “encouraged” to wear the niqab, burqa or even the hijab form a silent and oppressed group of individuals whose rights are never addressed or acknowledged by society or the courts. 

These garments are restrictive; they limit a woman’s ability to realize her full potential in society, even to function normally in public. 

They are far from empowering, as their supporters so disingenuously claim. 

This is simply propaganda to sell the garb to Muslim women and dupe the Canadian public and government into accepting the niqab and burqa. 

It is in this manner that “soft” Islamism insinuates itself into Canadian society.

In other words, it's Islam that's being empowered, not chicks.