"Burqa Ban is Just Another Way of Oppressing Women and Restricting Freedoms” | Huffpo, Atif Rashid

This is the photo that fronts Rashid's story. Note that it's not even a burka
nor taken from the front.  As if he's embarrassed to show the burka,
as he should be, as HuffPo should be.  It's a horrid item

Yea, right. And banning chains is just another way of oppressing slaves. 

I hadn't heard of this guy Atif Rashid, so I googled and found he's the font of many a lie in the name of Islam. He's a serial apologist and serial liar about the contents of Islam.
Some of these other posts of his have so many lies, that I just don't have the patience to go through them all. Save to say that you pretty much can't believe one word of his apologist nonsense.
There's a bunch of his writing over at the Independent, here.  But if you are taken in by any of his duplicity, shame on you. You need to read more: specifically of the Koran. And the Sirah: the life of Muhammad (Contumely be upon him).
The Independent, by the way, has fallen low. Their recent story about Islam being the saviour of sexual predation received well-deserved scorn.
Meantime, here's a rather more rational take on the burka/niqab issue, from Qanta Ahmed, a female Muslim, who wears (or used to wear) a burka. In the Speccie:

Rigid interpretations of the veil are a recent invention. They’re derived not from the Quran or early Islamic tradition but from a misogyny which claims a false basis in the divine. So when the ECJ  [European Court of Justice] supports employers who ban the hijab, it is categorically not impinging on anyone’s religious freedom. The veil has more to do with a set of quite new cultural mores. 

The Islamists wish to say: we Muslims are different from the West. Increasingly, we don’t look like you, or act like you. For Muslim families who have lived in Europe for generations, this is a strange and ugly trend. The men and women agitating for the right to wear headscarves in Europe would do well to remember our own history in the Muslim world. In the 1920s, with the rise of secular states in Egypt and Iran, Muslim women began to organise in pursuit of their rights. In 1922, these activists, led by Huda Shaarawi, founded the Egyptian Feminist Union, and discarded their veils. Within a decade, countless women followed suit, and slowly, they forced their way into the Egyptian academe. Eventually Iran and Turkey forced women to de-veil as official policy. Link. [PF: but then things changed back].....

Which brings to mind the (in)famous diptych:

Cairo University graduates 1978

Cairo University graduates 2005
From Nonie Darwish