Excerpt:
When a judge ruled that a 22-year-old Muslim defendant must remove her full-face veil during testimony — albeit behind a screen so that only the judge, jury and lawyers might track her facial responses — there was much heady talk about the implications for Europe's restless and unresolved struggle with issues of faith and identity, tolerance and freedom.
But a pithier riposte came from Salma Yaqoob, a Muslim and former city councilwoman in Birmingham who rhetorically asked a reporter from The Guardian whether the full-face veil, the niqab, should really absorb so much debate in a land seized with far broader social and economic challenges.
"Is this the biggest issue we face in the U.K. right now?" she asked.