The space between the hijab and niqab is where our anxieties lie
This is not to say that the niqab is a complete social death sentence. Travel along Overlea Blvd, through the commercial heart of Toronto’s heavily Muslim Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood, and you will see women in Burkas traveling in groups, talking with one another, doing their shopping at East York Town Centre, or dropping their children off at school. But socially, it’s a closed shop: The face covering sends the clear message that they conceive of the world around them to be largely one of leering men and other vulgar social contaminants, against which they must protect every inch of their body — except an eye-slit just big enough to make sure they don’t bump into cars and lampposts.
.. Islamic fundamentalists claim that niqabbed women do so out of their own free will, rather than the threat of a beating by their husband. But even if that is so, their “free will” obviously is informed by a paranoid and highly regressive understanding of women’s place in society. And it is perfectly understandable — and not in any way “Islamophobic” — that ordinary Canadians (including Levant, Martineau and The Menzoid) would be creeped out by it.