Denmark has struggled for decades with how to integrate non-Western immigrants into its welfare state. Public debate intensified in 2015 with the arrival of large groups of refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The anti-immigrant Danish People's Party became the second-largest party in an election that year and now supports the coalition government in parliament.

Zainab Ibn Hssain, who lives in Copenhagen and has been wearing the niqab for the last year, told Reuters: "It's not nice. It will mean that I won't be able to go to school, go to work or go out with my family."

"But I won't take my niqab off so I have to find another solution," the 20-year-old added.

Pape Poulsen, who leads the conservative party in the coalition, has described keeping one's face hidden in public as "incompatible with the values ​​of Danish society or respect for the community to keep the face hidden when meeting each other in the public space."

Zainab Ibn Hssain, who lives in Copenhagen and has been wearing the niqab for the last year, told Reuters: "It's not nice. It will mean that I won't be able to go to school, go to work or go out with my family.

"But I won't take my niqab off so I have to find another solution," the 20 year-old added.

She rejected suggestions that wearing the veil symbolised the rejection of Danish values or oppression of women. "It has nothing to do with integration or that we're oppressed. For me it is a war on Islam," she said.

Human rights group Amnesty International called the ban "a discriminatory violation of women's rights".

"All women should be free to dress as they please and to wear clothing that expresses their identity or beliefs," it said.

Ibn Hssain, who says she has been yelled at and spat at in public for wearing the niqab, will stay for now in Denmark despite the ban. "If I leave Denmark the politicians win. I feel what they deep down want is for Muslims to leave Denmark," she said.

Reuters