The niqab covers the whole face except the eyes. That’s the whole difference, and it’s the one that matters.
Quick guide to the words, because they get mixed up all the time:
- Hijab: a headscarf. Hair and neck covered, face visible.
- Niqab: a veil over the face, leaving only the eyes; usually worn with a long, loose robe.
- Burqa: the full version, with a mesh over the eyes too. The blue one you picture from Afghanistan.
- Chador: a full-body cloak held closed by hand, with the face uncovered; the Iranian one.
Is it compulsory in Islam? Most Muslim scholars say no: none of the Hanafi, Maliki or Shafi’i schools require it. It’s mainly some Salafi and Wahhabi interpretations that promote it. It’s most common in the Arabian Peninsula, and it spread from the late 1970s with the Saudi-backed religious revival.
In Europe, covering your face in public is banned in several countries. France was the first, with a 2010 law, and in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the ban didn’t breach the European Convention (S.A.S. v. France). Belgium, Austria and Denmark followed; Switzerland voted for it in 2021, and its ban has been in force since 1 January 2025. In Spain there’s no ban: Lleida tried one at municipal level in 2010, and the Supreme Court struck it down in 2013, because a city council can’t regulate freedom of religion; only a national law can.
Outside Europe, the bans come with very different reasons. China banned full-face veils in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in 2015, and in the whole region in 2017, as part of its “anti-extremism” rules aimed at the Uyghurs, along with “abnormal” beards. In Quebec, a 2017 law (Bill 62) required an uncovered face to work in or receive public services, from the bus to the library; a judge suspended it shortly after. And Tunisia, a Muslim-majority country, banned covered faces in public institutions in July 2019, for security reasons, about a week after a suicide bomber disguised in a niqab attacked Tunis.
The debate never closes, because it has two honest sides: freedom to dress as you choose, and the question of how free that choice really is. For a recent example: the Hubert Walter Award photo.