Israeli rabbis are all set to issue an edict to clamp down on the growing number of devout Jewish women wearing 'burka' by declaring the garment an item of sexual deviancy that is as promiscuous as wearing too little.

According to The Telegraph, three years back, a bid to protect their modesty, a small group of ultra-orthodox Jews in the town of Beit Shemesh chose to don the burka.

Soon the habit spread to five other Israeli towns causing alarm among ultra-orthodox religious leaders who once saw it as a relatively harmless eccentricity, even though the number of Jewish burka wearers is not thought to be more than a few hundred.

"There is a real danger that by exaggerating, you are doing the opposite of what is intended resulting in severe transgressions in sexual matters," Shlomo Pappenheim, a member of the rabbinical authority preparing to make the edict, said.

A woman who donned the burka, said that she had been taunted by neighbours who called her a "smelly Arab" and that Israeli soldiers had asked to see her identification papers to prove she was not a Muslim.

"At first, I just wore a wig, now when I see a woman with a wig, I pray to God to forgive her for wearing that thing on her head," the woman said. (ANI)