Source: The New York Times

By RICHARD MARTYN-HEMPHILL

ZAUBE, Latvia — With her niqab, a face-covering Islamic veil that reveals just the wearer’s eyes, Liga Legzdina stands out amid pine trees, grasslands and wood-paneled cottages in the Latvian hamlet of Zaube.

Villagers stare. Ms. Legzdina is one of a tiny handful of women — generally estimated at three — to wear the niqab in this Baltic nation, whose population of less than two million people includes about 1,000 practicing Muslims, according to government estimates.

But for Latvia’s Ministry of Justice, that is three niqabs too many. Citing a desire to protect Latvian culture and to address security concerns at a time of rising migration to Europe, the government is working on proposed legislation, inspired partly by similar restrictions on head coverings in France, that would ban face-covering veils from public spaces. The proposal would not ban the wearing of head scarves that do not cover the face, like hijabs, the coverings most commonly worn by Muslim women.

“A legislator’s task is to adopt preventive measures,” said Justice Minister Dzintars Rasnacs, a member of the anti-immigration National Alliance party, who predicted that the law would win overwhelming backing in Parliament and would be in place at the start of 2017.

The legislation in Latvia is one expression of a broader concern about immigration in general and Muslims in particular across Central and Eastern Europe, as migrants flock to the Continent from Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland have been among the countries most strongly opposed to taking in large numbers of migrants, reflecting anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim strains in their societies. Even in remote Latvia — hardly a top destination for migrants, given its frosty winters and threadbare welfare system — a darkening swirl of fear has emanated from politicians, the news media and the wider population.

Take the case of Ms. Legzdina, 27, who is not a migrant but a native Latvian who converted to Islam after a trip to Egypt as a teenager.

Now a medical student at a university in Riga, the capital, Ms. Legzdina, who goes by Fatima, comes to Zaube each spring and summer on vacation with her two young children. Her husband, Viesturs Kanders, followed her into the Islamic faith on their wedding day.

Read more