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Talbot - Your question about the full burka may take the thread down another path, but it is a valid question, and of course i am happy to answer it.
I share the disquiet that westerners feel about the inabilty to see wearers properly which impedes identification and our cultural custom of managing conversations by visual cues.
But I think that must be balanced by the right of women to dress as they wish.
I do wonder at the constant irony of people who, on the one hand complain about the subjugation of Muslim women whom they believe are forced to dress this way (I am unsure if that is as true as the popular western view has it) - but they see no contradicion in their avowed desire to enforce the non-wearing of the garment, which is every bit as heavy-handed and dicatorial as the subjugation they claim to abhor so much.
This makes me appear to be a fence-sitter, and I will live with that.
I don;t believe in dictating dress codes, either from the Muslim or western perspective. If women are forved to dress this way, I cannot know that, and if they choose to dress this way, then I am all for that.