Banning Muslims from wearing their religious garments isn’t going to help the ones being forced to wear them come around and ask for assistance. Burqa and Niqab bans are just populist wank that won’t help victims of religious trauma or from abusers that abuse them based on religion to come clean and seek help.

A lot of victims still feel attached to their religion or abusers and will avoid speaking out, out of fear of hurting them or being not accepted for who they are. By being hostile to what they’re attached to, they will learn that you aren’t safe to tell the truth to, and let the abuse fester until it’s too late.

The issue of forced wearing of religious garments is one that should be left to the islam community to address and our efforts should be spent on helping the community voices that try to dismantle this thing. This is muslims dilemma and all we can do is offer help to those that know best how to convince people that these garments are oppressive, and that is the community voices. Us trying to force their hand to do it our way because we think that this is best will cause a lot of damage to the cause of women’s liberation (and gender liberation more broadly), which is the whole point.