Status, Symbol

The niqab does not appear to be of Islamic origin at all. It was a status symbol among upper-class women in the Byzantine Empire, enabling them to walk the streets without being mistaken for streetwalkers. As Islam conquered that Empire's Anatolian, Levantine and North African provinces, so this, among much else, was taken on. But it almost certainly has absolutely nothing to do with Islam as such.

By all means let both men and women dress modestly. I do not want to see practically naked girls falling down drunk in the gutter, and I see no reason to regard them as having been liberated, but the very reverse. However, I object in the strongest possible terms to the idea that, simply because one finds women sexually attractive, one might jump on any woman if one can see anything more of her than her eyes. This suggestion is just as objectionable as the genital mutilation of male infants, or the sale of adolescent boys to the highest bidder through the dowry system.