The Quran does NOT specifically mention the Burka or tell women to wear such extremely confining clothes.

Instead, it instructs men AND women to dress and behave modestly in society.

The word Burka is not to be found anywhere in the Quran
The Arabic word Hijab 'can' be translated into veil or yashmak but other meanings for the word include screen, barrier, cover(ing), mantle, curtain, drapes, partition, division, divider etc.

The word "Hijab" appears in the Qur'an seven times, five of them as "Hijab" and twice as "Hijaban".

None of these "Hijab" words are used in the Qur'an in reference to what the traditional Muslims call today "the dress code for Muslim woman".
Hijab in the Qur'an has nothing to do with a woman's dress code!


Chris Khalil Moore is a convert to Islam who began a spiritual journey of discovery of his faith which took him to Saudi Arabia and other countries.

He writes in "The Burqa – Islamic or Cultural?"

"It is a crime that so many men who have coaxed, or pressured, or demanded that their women wear the burqa, or that their daughters wear a hijab prematurely, are most probably unable or unwilling to read The Quran and uphold its tenants, being totally dependent on the interpretations incorrectly preached to them by immoderate clerics and cultural exhortations not based in pure religion."


And so we have a conflict between two principles – respect for a cultural minority - NOT religious beliefs - and respect for women's equality.

Polly Toynbee, a British journalist and writer, observed on a visit to Kabul

"The veil turns women into things.
It was shocking to find on the streets of Kabul that invisible women behind burkas are not treated with special respect.
On the contrary, they are pushed and shoved off pavements by men, jostled aside as if almost subhuman without the face-to-face contact that recognises common humanity."

She argues that you can't have the concealment without the reification – the concealment is reification, 'erasure of every recognizable attribute of the human, leaving only anonymous amorphous colourless interchangeable blocks of fabric'

Ophelia Benson, whose books and website deal with the necessity of defending objective and scientific truth against the threats to rational thinking allegedly posed by religious fundamentalism, pseudoscience, wishful thinking etc concludes

"It's not just a neutral religious symbol, it's not just a sign of devoutness, it's not just a 'choice,' it's a barrier between women and the wider world.
That's why sensitive liberals need to give up pretending otherwise."