The burqa conundrum thus throws into strong relief the inherent limitations of human law. But the law is our default tool for addressing painful and disruptive social divisions. In this, we are not so different from our ancestors, who wielded the power of law and the state against each other in religious conflicts. Their civil wars were waged over the fundamental moral and social definitions by which the people proposed to live. Today's burqa dilemma ought to encourage in us some humility about the weight and immediacy of those disputes for our forebears. It may be wrong, or at least undesirable, to come to blows over such philosophical differences, but it is arrogant to be dismissive about the differences themselves, as if they are easy to put aside.
The burqa has yet to attain the prevalence in America that it has in Europe. But if the day comes when our sisters, wives, and daughters cannot walk the streets safely in Western dress because veiling has become the standard of modesty for burgeoning immigrant communities, we are as likely as the Europeans to turn to the blunt and imperfect tool of law.
The West's ideas of modesty, dignity, and a proper public face for women are in some ways as arbitrary as the Islamic world's. But that doesn't diminish their centrality to our identity and our sense of hope, meaning, and transcendent value. I am not sure what methods Americans will choose to defend those ideas, if they are challenged on our soil. What I am sure of is how passionately we will want to—and the visceral certainty we will have that we must.
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