Hon Irfan Baloch Sahib,
Totally agree with you that we are in a quandary.
Remember Sandy Gall, the journalist who became famous for reporting war in Afghanistan and started a charitable trust to help disable Afghans; I heard him in a TV program that he managed to film inside Taliban controlled Afghanistan wearing burqa.
One of the ‘Sahih Sitta’, the Sunan Ibn Daud, includes the following Hadith narrated by the mother of the believers Hazrat Ayesha (RA).
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Veiling according to the hadith tradition
Of the thousands of reports included in the canonical hadith collections, only one can be said to address explicitly the requirement of women’s covering. This hadith is reported by the ninth-century hadith compiler Abu Dawud (d. 888).
Book 32, Number 4092
This hadith is narrated by Aisha (the youngest wife of the Prophet) and reports an incident involving an encounter between the Prophet and Asma who is the daughter of Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s closest friend and first Caliph at the death of the Prophet:
Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma’, when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands.
This hadith is included only in Abu Dawud’s late ninth-century compilation and is considered to be the single most explicit and authoritative source for the belief that women are required to veil in Islam.
Unquote
https://veil.unc.edu/religions/islam/hadith/
Allama Iqbal believed that we are stuck in a dogmatic time warp because Ijtihad was banned at the end of Abbasid Caliphate in 1258. That was 700 years ago. In the light of the above Hadith, it can be argued that covering of the face is not a ‘Sharia’ issue but more of a cultural tradition. Therefore a council of the Islamic scholars thru Ijtihad could issue a fatwa that covering of the face is not mandatory. But this is not likely to happen any time soon.
Undoubtedly it is a sensitive issue with the Pashtuns; no one, especially a man, would dare ask a Pashtun burqa-clad lady to reveal her face. Nevertheless, we cannot escape the fact that burqa has been used to hide the identity of men as well as women. The fact that the son of Salman Taseer, son of Yusuf Raza Gilani as well as the SP Tahir Dawar, while being kidnapped in Pakistan ended up in Afghanistan despite efforts of the security forces was most probably because they were forced to wear burqa. Regrettably, this problem is not likely to disappear in the foreseeable future and such tragic incidents would probably recur.
Security of the life & property of all Pakistanis is the responsibilities of the State and the State needs to train more female police on a priority basis to check the face of the burqa clad ladies.