It is obvious that no civilized society can permit women to wear burqas in public. If you are an employer, how would you know if it is actually Fatima working in your factory and not Abdul, her clumsy brother? If you are a store owner, how can you allow someone to come into your place of business that you cannot identify if they steal your products? If you are a judge or prosecutor how can you allow a burqa-clad person come near you when you cannot tell if it is really Leroy (who escaped from prison last week) out to kill you with weapons hidden under his hijab?

If you work at a government building how can you tell if it's not a suicide bomber under the burqa? If a burqa-clad gunman shoots a cop, how do you identify and capture the killer? [See Philly Cop Killed: Time to Ban the Burqa]

If you are an administrator at a health facility how can you be sure that the person under the burqa is actually the certified nurse and not a friend of hers filling in for her? Or even determine if she is stealing drugs, or even worse, that she hasn't changed into a sterile hospital uniform?

Even a nation whose state religion is Islam has been forced to ban the burqa at hospitals:

Bare Naked Islam's Weblog, 22 Mar 2010, BANGLADESH hospital bans the burqa to prevent stealing

Bangladesh’s largest state-run hospital has banned staff from wearing full-face burqas after an increase in thefts of mobile phones and wallets from wards. Female staff have been ordered to wear standard uniforms, which do not cover either the hair or face, while on duty at the Bangabandhu Medical University Hospital in Dhaka, senior administrator Abdul Majid Bhuiyan told AFP.

“We decided to enforce our uniform regulations after discovering instances of stealing by veiled staff,” he said, adding some burqa-wearing staff had also been secretly sending unqualified “proxy workers” to cover shifts for them.

“Doctors have also said burqa-clad women who travel to work on crowded public buses then do not change into regulation uniform could carry diseases into the hospital,” he said.

Muslims see the problem - France gets it by banning Burqas in the workplace and now planning to ban it altogether in public - what's wrong with American and the rest of the civilized world?

Of course, if Muslim women want to wear mini-burqas as in the photo above, then I may reconsider some of my objections.