THE issue of banning the niqab (the full face covering worn by some Muslim women) exploded into my emails last week. I am always taken aback at the passions aroused on this question in the market towns of the New Forest, where I am quite sure one has never been seen.

The fact is that I share the prejudice of my correspondents: the notion that a woman’s face should only be seen by her husband strikes me as an expression of the fact that she is his property. It is a concept that I find deeply offensive and wholly repugnant.

However, it is more a matter of culture than religion. The Koran doesn’t require it and the overwhelming majority of even devout Muslim women do not wear one.

Nevertheless, it has become associated in the public mind with Islam and this is reinforced by the agitation of Islamist fanatics who demand that their women cover up.

In comparing our religion and culture, however, we should show some humility. Even now the wearing of a mantilla is not unknown in Roman Catholicism, and I remember when even the Queen wore one when she met the Pope.

It is only in my adult life that The Church of England admitted women to the priesthood and even now it still excludes them from the episcopate.

Our laws and practices were deeply discriminatory for most of the Christian era, often treating women as the property of their husbands. As late as the early 1970s Wimpy cafés refused to serve lone women late at night, on the grounds they were bound to be up to no good.

I am glad that we have made progress. I should like to see other cultures make progress too, and I should certainly like to see the niqab and similar head coverings disappear.

The key issue is how best this can be achieved. I fear that an outright ban will have the very opposite effect to the one desired: by initiating something of a culture war so that women from minorities, who wouldn’t otherwise have covered up, will wish to do so as an expression of cultural solidarity with their community.

Ultimately it comes down to this: my belief in individual liberty is stronger than my dislike of what I consider to be an expression of female subjugation. And women should wear what they choose, however we might disapprove of their choice. The alternative would be to place on the police the burden of enforcing laws against a “victimless” crime.