Over the past few years I have bitten my tongue when statements about Islamic women wearing burqas and veils have cropped up in the press. The common, misinformed perception is that Muslim women mostly wear the burqa to express their religious devotion. That's rubbish.

I am not anti-islamic, I lived as a Muslim woman from the age of 17 until I was 22, I have four children – two of whom are Muslims. We are a loving family regardless of religion, and I have worked with and for Muslim people for much of my professional life as an international aid worker in war zones. But I would like to put the record straight once and for all, to wear a burqa, hijab or headscarf during daily life is not wajib (mandatory and prescribed by the Koran) but only Sunnat (recommended culturally and as a matter of personal choice).

A devout woman wearing a niqab at Lakemba Mosque

Having married a prince in an Islamic country, Malaysia, and originally hailing from Australia, I was required to undertake four years of Islamic study under the tutelage of the royal household's iman and religions teacher, a respected national scholar. These twice-weekly classes were chaperoned – not for my chastity or purity but, as the iman explained to me, for his! He truly believed that neither I nor any woman could be trusted alone with a male without the baser female instincts coming to the fore.

I learnt that husbands can beat their wives providing they don't mark their faces; and that fathers who instigate their daughters' circumcisions will be rewarded in heaven, even though this abhorrent mutilation has nothing to do with religion but is a cultural practice to control women and temper their sensuality. In fact, much of the teaching, rather than being religious, was cultural and archaic.