Well this is all getting more absurd by the moment. Today, Angela Merkel proposed a ban on the burqa and niqab, “wherever it is legally possible.”

The proposal was laid out in a speech to fellow center-right CDU party members in the hope of rallying the party around her bid for retaining the Chancellorship in 2017. Yet in the past, the furthest Ms. Merkel ever went was to say that women who wear burqas have, “little chance of integrating in Germany.”

Hence it must be noted that the timing of all this is quite peculiar.

One must wonder whether this policy proposal has any connection to a certain discovery relating to the case of Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old medical student from Freiburg.

On October 16th, Ms. Ladenburger was cycling home in the early hours of the morning when she was raped and then drowned in a river. Her dead body was found by a jogger that same day.

But by December 3rd, international media reported that the assailant was a “17-year-old” Afghan asylum seeker. Later it emerged that his name is Hussein Khavari. This caused considerable outrage in Germany, not least because Ms. Ladenburger purportedly volunteered in refugee centers in her spare time. It is still unclear whether Hussein Khavari had been acquainted with her while she was doing volunteer work.