How many muslims wear burqa

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Research Topics. Share this link:. Jacob Poushter is an associate director focusing on global attitudes at Pew Research Center. Facts are more important than ever. Women in many countries face harassment for clothing deemed too religious — or too secular.

Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U. Are you a Faith and Flag Conservative? Progressive Left? The passion to ban the burqa is likely linked to the idea that all Muslims are synonymous with terrorism.

This is evidently not the case, but the burqa bans —when coupled with the overestimation of the number of Muslims across Europe — create a sense of being able to curtail the numbers of Muslims, and terror, by controlling what women wear. In , France became the first European country to ban the burqa. At the time of legislation in , there were 4. As of July , Muslims now account for 7.

Legislative documents supporting the ban reported that 1, Muslim women wore the face-covering burqa in the country in This number represented 0. However, the 1, figure is reportedly a significant over-inflation of the initial figures released by the French secret service, who were charged with collecting this data.

It originally found that only women wore the burqa. This represents an even lower percentage of the population: 0. It is almost inconceivable that so much time, effort and cost would be spent bringing in a law that only affected people in a country of over 63m.

The low number of women wearing the burqa in France reflects wider European estimates of Muslim women who cover their faces, where figures are either correspondingly low, or so low as to be impossible to record. Since the ruling in France, other European countries have followed suit. The Netherlands approved a partial burqa ban in certain public spaces such as hospitals and schools in State broadcaster NOS reported the total number of Muslim women that this affects ranges from , most of whom only occasionally wore it.

This equates to 0. In , a French Interior Ministry report estimated that just 0. In Austria, a ban of full face veils in public spaces was said to affect just 0.

In Belgium between and women wore the niqab before a ban came into force, says Michael Privot, director of the European Network Against Racism. Between and women in Demark - which banned face veils in public this month - wore a niqab or burqa on a daily basis. That's 0. While Boris Johnson's comments about Islamic face veils have provoked consternation among some, his defenders have said they were made as part of an argument against banning such garments.

Other countries though, have taken this step. France was the first European country to ban full-face veils - ie burkas and niqabs - in public places in April , seven years after it introduced a law prohibiting conspicuous religious symbols in state schools. It was followed a few months later by Belgium , which banned the wearing of partial or total face veils in public on the grounds of security.

Full or partial bans on full-face veils have since been in place in Austria , Bulgaria , the southern German state of Bavaria and, since 1 August, Denmark. There have been protests against Denmark's new law, which does not mention burkas and niqabs by name, but says "anyone who wears a garment that hides the face in public will be punished with a fine".

By contrast, in Iran the law requires women to wear modest "Islamic" clothing. In practice, this means women must wear a chador, a full-body cloak, or a headscarf and a manteau overcoat that covers their arms. There are posters in cities and towns comparing unveiled women to unwrapped candy and lollipops attracting unwanted attention from flies.

Recently, some Iranian women have protested against this law by taking off their headscarf in public. One woman was jailed for two years in March for doing this. Why I stopped wearing the headscarf.

Denmark passes ban on full-face veils. Iranian women threw off the hijab - then what? Image source, EPA. Is it a woman's choice to cover up? This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Four Muslim women discuss their relationship with the veil. Ms Noor has four daughters none of whom wear a burka.