The contradiction in Europe’s “freedom” debate is impossible to ignore

At a far-right Tommy Robinson rally in London this weekend, women racialised as white mocked Muslim women by wearing burkhas on stage and theatrically removing them to cheers from the crowd. A few years ago in France, schools moved to ban abayas, and back in 2016, images circulated of French police forcing Muslim women on beaches to remove full-body swimwear.

So which is it?

Are women free to wear what they want or only what white Europeans are comfortable seeing? Why is wearing less called "liberation" and wearing more called "oppression"? Why is one framed as freedom, and the other as a threat to it?

This is not really about clothing. It is about power, identity, and who gets to define "normal" in European society.

The irony is staggering: women are publicly humiliated, surveilled, and policed in the name of "women's rights." States claim to defend freedom while dictating what Muslim women can and cannot wear in public spaces.

None of this exists in a historical vacuum. Europe's relationship with Islam has long been shaped by conflict - from the Crusades and colonialism to the construction of a Christian European identity against a Muslim "other." Modern Islamophobia recycles these same fears through the language of "Western values," "integration," and "protecting culture."

Every society has rules. That is not the question.

The real question is: who gets to exist freely without their identity being constantly debated, mocked, regulated, or treated as a problem to solve?