"the impact of the ban on ALL women - including the Muslim women who want to resist cultural or 'moral' compulsion to wear the 'coffin-like' burka"

Apart from my personal reaction to it - which is as previously stated, essentially a gut reaction in the same way I might respond to other cultural practices as say FGM or foot binding - I think this is very much the key issue for me. I recall some time ago discussions concerning banning the burka or veil on some University campuses, in order to protect Muslim women from the ABUSE that they were receiving for failing to don "modest" Islamic dress from their male Muslim peers.

As far as an outright ban in the general street, I couldn't personally support that any more than I could a ban on women getting breast implants to do titty pics. I'm not well read on feminist lit. at all, but I do find many of these issues quite troubling - which is basically all I said in response to the thread in my last post.