Europe is banning cloth again, and this season it is a continental fashion. France went first in 2010 and remains the champion: no niqab on the street, no hijab in the public school — and, note it well, no kippah there either. Belgium followed in 2011, then Bulgaria, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands; Latvia and Norway wrote their own versions. Switzerland put the burqa to a referendum, and the ban has been in force since January 2025. Portugal’s parliament passed its own last autumn — a gift from the far right that the respectable center happily co-signed. Italy’s government has tabled a bill to fine veiled women in schools, shops and offices. Britain’s Reform party demands a “debate.” In Spain, the Balearics are pressing Madrid to join. More than twenty countries in, and half a continent applauds itself.

I will say something that irritates almost everyone. A society that bans the hijab, the burqa or the kippah is not defending liberal ideology or Western civilization. It is signing a confession that it can no longer defend it.

And the kippah is not a rhetorical flourish. In a French public school, a Jewish boy may not cover his head any more than a Muslim girl may cover hers. The law that was sold as a shield against Islam turned out, as such laws always do, to be a blade that cuts everyone within........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)