IN QUEBEC, Canada’s French-speaking province, it is illegal to talk to a librarian while wearing sunglasses. So is using a bus pass while shrouded in a scarf, no matter how bitter the weather. These prohibitions are the consequence of a law enacted in October whose real purpose is to ban Muslim women from wearing niqabs, or face veils, when they provide or receive public services. By widening the ban to all sorts of face covering it seeks to deflect the charge that it is based on religious animus. It does the job as well as a see-through burqa.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims challenged the law in Quebec’s superior court on November 7th, saying it violates rights to sexual equality and religious freedom. The court is expected to rule soon on whether to suspend the prohibition on face coverings while it deliberates.

Quebec’s Liberal government, led by Philippe Couillard, is not the first to try to strip people of faith-based garments. France and Belgium banned face coverings in public in 2011. The separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), which governed briefly until April 2014, tried but failed to pass a charter of values that would have banned public servants from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols. Mr Couillard tutted that the charter would infringe people’s rights. A Liberal government would do better, he promised.

It came up with a muddle, which has flummoxed officials trying to interpret it. Quebec’s justice minister said at first that face coverings, including sunglasses, would be banned on buses, then said passengers could put them on after showing their passes. An exemption on “religious grounds”, granted through a cumbersome procedure, makes the law potentially pointless as well as confusing. The PQ and another opposition party said the legislation did not go far enough and voted against it.

Just 50 or 60 women, out of Quebec’s 8.4m people, wear niqabs, says Farida Mohamed of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. Most Quebeckers and Canadians favour laws that oblige them to unveil, polls show. Despite its non-sectarian disguise, the new law risks inflaming Islamophobia in a province that has more than its fair share of it. In January a student shot six Muslims at a mosque in Quebec City, the capital. The sunglasses ban is only partly a joke.