Bismillah
Shamms, I might have come a little bit late, but usually I prefer to leave two people discuss specially in similar cases as sometime a third party would just overwhelm the questioner.
The thread was not talking about a Non Muslim entity banning Niqab or intending to ban Niqab, but rather the head of the most prestigious Muslim entity. He is called the Grand Imam. Well, even if he intended to do so because there some cases of abuse, defraud..etc. There is always a solution of providing a woman to validate the Niqabbi's identity, just as the situation in Saudi Arabia. Thus, a student coming to exam can be simply identified and validated by a woman who checks her face against her ID. But banning it and calling it mere tradition, as Jennifer said, if one wants to fully cover, why the fuss? unlike when women fully undress to swim no one objects.