To ask how many times you have seen anyone wearing a niqab (full face veil revealing eyes) or burqa (full face veil with mesh cover for eyes)?

Coventry and Birmingham have plenty of people wearing full covering.

I've had female students living with me from the Middle East and they put on their covering (never face or eyes) to travel home. The find that it is better for them with Middle Eastern men staring at them if they don't and making them feel very uncomfortable. They don't wear full covering here in uk as they feel comfortable without - but have always kept hair covered and wrists and ankles

A beautiful Italian lady that works for me has married an Indian Muslim man and has adopted the hijab and abaya. Her husband didn’t make her, he doesn’t care one way or another.

She has chosen to do it and she is converting from Catholicism to Islam out of free choice as she has said that a lot of the religion resonates with her.

She is enjoying wearing the hijab/abaya and has loved not being subject to the male gaze.

In our team we’ve quizzed her a lot about this as it’s such a radical change for her but she is very happy. It’s not something I could see myself doing, but each to their own.

Every Saturday at the car boot there’s a couple of women in niqabs.
Tbh, I have no problem with a generalised ban on face coverings in public, but they need to be generalised. Niqabs are one thing, but it also needs to include face coverings at protests (if you have any courage in your convictionsa d you’re not thee to cause trouble, you shouldn’t be hiding) as well as balaclavas and pulled up snoods, which are the headgear of choice for snatch and grab phone thieves, young county lines e-bike riders and illegal motorbike riders in my city.

And Marco Polo went to live in Imperial China, that didn't make China a Western or Italian nation.

Are we talking continuous presence, structured, and large enough to be significative at a national scale?
Nope, we are not until the late end of the 20th century.

I am looking forward to your next assumption or erroneous fact, it's gonna be a doozy, I am sure. And please, help me out for this bingo card, I am almost there.

I agree. The idea that it’s an empowering choice that women make with absolutely no outside influence either culturally or from family traditions/expectations,
is just nonsense.
One of the saddest thing I ever saw was on a beach in Spain a few years ago. A family of four. Dad and kids were in shorts, bare chests, swimming and playing ball.
Mum was in full covering on a boiling hot day.
Just awful.

The earliest evidence of Islamic presence in the UK dates back to 794 AD.

I am surprised people see so many niqabs outside certain areas in the UK. I live in South London and work centrally and see a fair few women (including friends and colleagues) who wear hijabs. But I don't regularly see a lot of women wearing niqabs (to be clear the niqab is a head and face covering where only the eyes are visible.)

My general view on this stuff is men, including those in government, should not be telling women what to wear.

Everyone in the UK, born here or not, with a passport or not should abide to this simple rule: British law comes first, British society comes first, British values come first.

Muslim religion is significant in the UK solely because of recent immigration. It is not an established British tradition.

Western civilisation has fought for centuries to get rid of the dominance of the Church and make it a personal matter of faith rather than a political system.

Accepting as equal a foreign religion who has largely not gone through the same evolution is taking us all back to dark times of obscurantism.

I m going back to work, have all a lovely time calling me names.

How is a Muslim who is born in Britain not part of society?

Is Judaism equally not a “foreign religion”?

Quite a few in the city.

I can only hope they are wearing it through deliberate choice, not religious and cultural pressure, especially when the men and boys accompanying them are cool and comfortable in t shirts and shorts.

Some might say that allowing children and young teens wear western skimpy clothes is abuse, sexualising children, wearing crop tops and skin tight shorts, teenagers with their skirts rolled up to the arse, breasts on show, the teenagers and younger girls only want to dress like that because of the adults, we blindside them with the beauty industry from a very young age.
Neither is perfect. I’m not foolish enough into thinking our girls aren’t brainwashed by society too.

Everyone in the UK, born here or not, with a passport or not should abide to this simple rule: British law comes first, British society comes first, British values come first.

Muslim religion is significant in the UK solely because of recent immigration. It is not an established British tradition.

Western civilisation has fought for centuries to get rid of the dominance of the Church and make it a personal matter of faith rather than a political system.

Accepting as equal a foreign religion who has largely not gone through the same evolution is taking us all back to dark times of obscurantism.

I m going back to work, have all a lovely time calling me names.

This is the sort of thing that has be researched and considered before passing laws. You and I can't realistically assess the balance of interests.

Should our legal system pander to the illegal actions of abusive men? Probably not.

What groups may benefit from a ban, and how? I can think of deaf people who lip-read. There will be other considerations that I haven't thought of, and then the relative balance has to be assessed.