But masks can only protect you from so much. Whether they are thin pieces of cloth covering your mouth to keep out the coronavirus, or thinly veiled principles like laïcité, touted to protect secularism but tilted to spread Islamophobia and infect the national body with that virus, masks eventually have to come off. And when they do, the real faces of French hypocrisy and bigotry are revealed for everyone to see and behold.

QUESTION: The author analogizes laïcité to virus-protective masks, framing it as a cover for prejudice. This rhetorical move invites scrutiny of how secular principles can be weaponized.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 730