The Burqa and The Beast

Western progressives used to urge tolerance of the full-face veil. Now, they want to punish women for rejecting it.

Last week, a viral tweet by a British anti-“Islamophobia” activist sparked a reckoning on the new limits of pluralism in the West. Zara Hussain, a Sunni-Muslim asylum seeker and Labour campaigner, posted a video excerpt from a right-wing rally and decreed, “As Muslims, we shouldn’t have to tolerate this in our home….England.”

The offending footage didn’t depict Koran desecration (an act which can lead to criminal charges in Britain), nor anything on par with the risqué Charlie Hebdoe cartoons that liberals defended a decade ago. Instead, the intolerable image—the display that progressives in Britain want to criminalize—consisted of three French feminist activists, adorned in full-face burqas, who took the stage and triumphantly removed them.