What can Meta’s smart glasses teach us about the niqab, and the power to control who gets to see us?
Meta is bringing a new slipstream technology update to its Ray-Ban smart glasses, with the feature already beginning to reach users.
Last week, Meta’s VP of Wearables, Alex Himel, announced a software update designed to prevent users from taking photographs or recording videos when the glasses detect that their recording LED has been covered. The LED is intended to alert those around the wearer that they are being recorded, but hackers soon figured out how to disable it, allowing the glasses to function without the visible recording signal.
Meta’s latest update targets another workaround: although the camera will not begin recording if the LED is already blocked, users had been able to start recording first and then cover the light. Under the new update, the camera will automatically stop recording if the LED is subsequently obstructed.
Himel says that he is aware that hackers probably won’t give up trying to jailbreak the wearable cameras, “We’re going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone’s gallery,” he said.
Surveillance has become increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, from traffic and security cameras to the personalised advertising that follows us online. Yet perhaps more significant is the way surveillance is being transformed from something imposed upon us into something we are encouraged to embrace. Kylie Jenner’s promotion of the Meta’s smart glasses exemplifies this shift: technology capable of unobtrusively recording the world around us is presented not as an instrument of surveillance, but as a chic lifestyle choice.
Following Jenner’s collaboration with Meta, a wave of content creators also began promoting the glasses to their audiences. However, the campaign soon attracted criticism, with followers drawing attention to cases where the technology was being misused to harass and covertly record women without their consent. The backlash was significant enough for the glasses to become derisively known online as “pervert glasses”, exposing the tension between their carefully curated image as an essential lifestyle accessory and their potential to facilitate invasive forms of surveillance. Rida Tharana, an influencer with 1.6 million Instagram followers, subsequently “took accountability” for participating in the Meta campaign.
Further concerns have emerged over the potential misuse of the glasses by paedophiles to secretly photograph and film children.
In one instance, a woman told the BBC a man had recorded her, and then demanded money to remove the videos from social media.
In Scotland last month, police said they were investigating a far-right TikToker who allegedly filmed himself making sexualised comments to young women and telling a Sikh shopkeeper about a plan to “breed out the white race” without her knowledge.
Theatres, restaurants and pubs in the UK have joined in on the backlash, banning the Meta glasses over privacy fears.
Reversing the direction of the gaze
By the later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unexpected consequence of widespread mask-wearing had begun to emerge: for some women, concealing the face also meant temporarily escaping the pressures attached to presenting it according to prevailing beauty standards. The pandemic unintentionally offered a brief glimpse of what it might mean to reclaim control over being seen — an experience many women would not ordinarily have had. The rise of smart glasses, however, exposes what happens when that control is taken from us.
As one account in The Guardian described it, the mask began to function for many women, almost as an “invisibility cloak”, providing relief from the feeling of constantly being judged by the exterior. And, what began as a public-health necessity therefore acquired an unexpected form of liberation: the face, temporarily removed from public view, and was no longer required to perform.
Ghuraba
In 1959, the psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon examined the French colonial project in Algeria and its attempts to “liberate” Algerian women by forcing them to remove the veil. For Fanon, however, unveiling was not simply an act of emancipation; it was also an attempt to penetrate a barrier that denied the coloniser visual access. He writes in ‘A Dying Colonialism’: “Unveiling this woman is revealing her beauty; it is baring her secret, breaking her resistance, making her available for adventure.” He later observes that “this woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer,” because “there is no reciprocity.” The significance of the veil, in Fanon’s account, therefore lies in its ability to disrupt the relationship between observer and observed.
The contemporary significance of this becomes clearer with the emergence of wearable cameras. Meta’s smart glasses reverse this relationship almost entirely. And, in an environment increasingly saturated with technologies of observation, the ability to control one’s own visibility takes on a renewed significance.
The implications becoming even more troubling when you consider where smart glasses technology could be heading. WIRED recently reported that Meta had embedded a code for a facial-recognition feature, internally referred to as “NameTag”, into its AI software for the glasses. Meta subsequently said the feature was not available, but the discovery illustrated how quickly a device that can record strangers could potentially become a device that can identify them.
That possibility changes the privacy equation dramatically
A camera merely records your face. An AI system can potentially turn that face into a name, a profile and a piece of searchable information. Researchers have already demonstrated versions of this concept using modified Meta Ray-Bans, combining the glasses with facial-recognition and online search tools that a layman could use to identify strangers. Consequently, the issue here is no longer simply, “Did that man just film me?” but rather, “Someone might have identified me and have information on me without ever speaking to me.”
And here’s the crux of the matter: regulators can introduce new tech, and venues can prohibit their use. Such measures may reduce the risk, but they cannot resolve the fundamental uncertainty: you may not know that you have been recorded until the recording has already happened. And, Meta’s little flashing LED is not quite the privacy solution it wants us to believe it is. What if the person filming you is several metres away, outside your peripheral vision, or simply positioned where you cannot see the camera? By the time you realise you have been captured, the footage may already exist somewhere beyond your control. And, once an image enters an AI ecosystem, the possibilities become more disturbing still: in January 2026, users of Grok were reported to have disproportionately targeted images of women wearing hijab, manipulating them to simulate undressing. The problem, then, is not only the act of being recorded without consent, but what can subsequently be done with that image — potentially transforming an unnoticed moment of surveillance into something far more egregious, unethical, and difficult to contain.
The Benefits of Niqab during Unprecedented Times
Whether the niqab is fard remains a matter of longstanding juristic debate, with the majority of jurists holding that covering the face is not obligatory, while some jurists — including scholars within the Hanbali school — regard it as a religious obligation.
Across Europe, restrictions on wearing the niqab in public have become increasingly widespread. France was the first European country to introduce a nationwide ban on face coverings in public spaces in 2011, followed by Belgium. The Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland have since introduced their own restrictions, although the scope and legal basis of these measures vary between countries.
These laws have generally been justified ironically through arguments involving security, public identification, social cohesion or the supposed liberation of women.
In a society increasingly defined by covert surveillance, and distorted imaging, the benefits of observing the niqab may become more apparent than ever.
This does not mean that the niqab should be reduced to a technological response to surveillance, nor that its religious meaning is exhausted by privacy. For many Muslim women, it is fundamentally an act of worship: an expression of faith, devotion to Allah, and all of our actions must be done to please our creator alone. Yet its contemporary significance may extend towards protection and security in a very different context.
The functionality of the niqab has been distorted by the fangs of modernity; as an act of oppression and restriction. However, it might now be viewed, due to the unprecedented times that we live in, as an act of liberation — an act of refusal: refusal to make the self perpetually available to the gaze of others. The question then is not simply whether a woman is permitted to cover her face, but whether she should have the freedom to decide who gets to see it, when, and on what terms.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously suggested that smart glasses could rival phones by the 2030s. However, industry experts claim the transition will be slower. In 2025, we saw a significant surge in sales, suggesting the shift towards wearable technology may already be underway.
Modesty is not simply about controlling what is visible to others; it also involves disciplining one’s own gaze. The Qur’an instructs believing men and women to lower their gaze and guard their chastity, describing this as “purer for them”. The command is consequently protective. While this principle is not dependent on technology, the Islamic ethic of the gaze feels increasingly profound in an age of ubiquitous cameras. To lower one’s gaze is, in part, to accept that not everything we can see is for ours to consume. And, in a culture moving towards technologies that makes almost everything more and more visible, spiritual restraint becomes more powerful than ever.
