Isn't it the context that is important? The way I understand it is that Islam sees the worth of woman as half that of a man.
I understand that a woman in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia has few rights when compared to a man's rights. This is part of being a muslim, is how I understand it. You can risk losing your home, your children etc if you try to divorce a man, or complain.
I don't doubt that there a few women who cover their faces and feel it is liberating them from a sexualised Western gaze and that, in accordance with their religion, this covering of the face will allow them through the gates into 'Eden'
But as a feminist I just can't shrug my shoulders and think that this is okay, it's a 'cultural thing', when there are so many women who are treated as chattel and denied so many basic things because of their sex. I just cannot believe that it is a choice freely given. I don't believe that woman can't be a muslim if she doesn't cover her face. And frankly I would not believe in the kind of god who required a woman to cover her face to improve her chances at entering paradise. It just doesn't make sense.
I see some of the posters have adopted this fashion as a free choice. But don't you see that in doing this you are confirming the idea that a woman is a possession, that there is something inherently 'bad' about the sight of an ankle, a mouth, an ear, a wrist? So bad, that women have to pray separately from men, lest they distract the men from prayer?
I just can't see how, from a feminist perspective, there is any argument to be made in defence of this - it makes me angry just thinking about it. And I cannot accept that a woman wearing a mini skirt and boob tube is just as bad.
But feminists seem strangely quiet about it.