I am not arguing security, that was my very point.

It is not a question of "security", but of what it takes to keep human interactions healthy in society. Everyone being *identifiable*, i.e. that I know the person I am seeing today is the same one I saw elsewhere yesterday, is one requirement.

The point of the niqab is to hinder communication by making it one-way, and making individual women invisible and unidintifiable.

If everyone wore face masks, then everyone would be on the same basis. If only some do, you have unequal communication, and that is bad for society, as the ECHR has agreed.