Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Mediterraneo10 2591 days ago
Hijabs do not cover the face. A niqab or burqa would, but the former are very rare in the West, and the latter virtually nonexist.
1 comments

Maybe in the countryside. Go to any West EU capital and you'll see planty of niqabs and burqas.
> you'll see plenty of ... burqas

No, you won’t. The burqa is extremely rare in Western Europe. This is pointed out whenever political parties propose a burqa ban: a country would be banning something that isn’t even a significant thing there. IIRC, the total number of burqa wearers in all of France, for example, does not exceed 300.

As for niqabs, you do see one from time to time, but they certainly aren’t common against the total Muslim population, and when you do, it may be that the wearers are visitors from e.g. the Gulf states and not locals.

I see a burqa weekly and 10+ niqabs every day, and the area that I live is not what you would call a "muslim zone". It's certainly not a tourist zone, so unlikely to be non-locals.
At this point I can only assume that you are not operating with any standard scholarly definition of the word "burqa". There are different terms for the various modesty garments from the Muslim world for a reason.
He just used the terms correctly. Is your response to losing an argument to gaslight their vocabulary? That is not very sporting, even for hn.
How do you know he is using the term correctly? Seeing burqas regularly in Western Europe would be so extraordinary a thing, that assuming that he is using the term incorrectly is kinder than the other conclusion that could be drawn about his claim. From the downvoting of his posts, others too notice something is off.
I live in a Western EU capital. Such clothes are rare. Last time I saw one in person was while passing through Istanbul airport in 2015.