February 11, 2009 5:48 PM
- Text
Arab World Debates The Veil
(AP)
The origin of the debate could not be more intimate: what a woman chooses to wear before she leaves home. But the increasing popularity of the full Muslim face veil has set off an emotional dispute in the Arab world over whether the covering is required by Islam for modesty or a dangerous sign of political extremism.
The debate is most intense in Egypt, the world's largest Arab country, where one university two weeks ago banned women who wear the face veil, or niqab, from living in a hostel, and government-backed newspapers have launched a campaign against it.
"The niqab vogue: an imported innovation, used by the political extremists," read a recent banner on the pro-government Al Mussawar Weekly. "Our new battle is against the niqab," added Mohammed Fatouh, a specialist on Islamic issues in another government-owned weekly, Rose el-Youssef.
Salama Ahmed Salama, a columnist in Egypt's biggest government daily, Al-Ahram, was more blunt: "It expresses an extremist attitude ... Wearing the niqab is as outrageous as wearing a bathing suit or pajamas to the office."
On any given street in the capital, the face of one woman will be fully covered, with only her eyes peering through; nearby another woman will cover her hair, leaving her face bare, and still another will have her face and hair free of any covering.
The dispute highlights the growing wave of conservative Islamic practice across the Arab world - and among Muslims living in the West - and the intense struggle between secular governments and Islamic opposition groups. Head scarves fell out of favor among some urban Arab women in the 1920s and 1930s but began reappearing in the 1970s and 1980s. The evolution has been steady with more women covering their hair each year and more also wearing body cloaks.
But the biggest dispute has been over the niqab - a full facial veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes that re-emerged in Egypt in the late 1980s and has since grown in popularity, both in the Arab world and among Arab Muslims in the West.
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in early October that he asks women who visit his office to remove the veil so he can see their faces, and called it a disturbing sign of the divisions in British society. Aishah Azmi, a 24-year-old Muslim teaching assistant in northern England, was then suspended from her job for refusing to remove a black veil that left only her eyes visible.
In Egypt, the issue has simmered for years and caught new fire after Straw's comments.
The president of Helwan University on the outskirts of Cairo banned students who wear the niqab from living at the university's hostel, citing security reasons - and leading to small protests by students.
The female head of the Islamic department of the women's college at Al-Azhar University, Soad Saleh, was recently sued by a radical cleric and received death threats after she said she was "disgusted by women in niqab."
The debate is most intense in Egypt, the world's largest Arab country, where one university two weeks ago banned women who wear the face veil, or niqab, from living in a hostel, and government-backed newspapers have launched a campaign against it.
"The niqab vogue: an imported innovation, used by the political extremists," read a recent banner on the pro-government Al Mussawar Weekly. "Our new battle is against the niqab," added Mohammed Fatouh, a specialist on Islamic issues in another government-owned weekly, Rose el-Youssef.
Salama Ahmed Salama, a columnist in Egypt's biggest government daily, Al-Ahram, was more blunt: "It expresses an extremist attitude ... Wearing the niqab is as outrageous as wearing a bathing suit or pajamas to the office."
On any given street in the capital, the face of one woman will be fully covered, with only her eyes peering through; nearby another woman will cover her hair, leaving her face bare, and still another will have her face and hair free of any covering.
The dispute highlights the growing wave of conservative Islamic practice across the Arab world - and among Muslims living in the West - and the intense struggle between secular governments and Islamic opposition groups. Head scarves fell out of favor among some urban Arab women in the 1920s and 1930s but began reappearing in the 1970s and 1980s. The evolution has been steady with more women covering their hair each year and more also wearing body cloaks.
But the biggest dispute has been over the niqab - a full facial veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes that re-emerged in Egypt in the late 1980s and has since grown in popularity, both in the Arab world and among Arab Muslims in the West.
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in early October that he asks women who visit his office to remove the veil so he can see their faces, and called it a disturbing sign of the divisions in British society. Aishah Azmi, a 24-year-old Muslim teaching assistant in northern England, was then suspended from her job for refusing to remove a black veil that left only her eyes visible.
In Egypt, the issue has simmered for years and caught new fire after Straw's comments.
The president of Helwan University on the outskirts of Cairo banned students who wear the niqab from living at the university's hostel, citing security reasons - and leading to small protests by students.
The female head of the Islamic department of the women's college at Al-Azhar University, Soad Saleh, was recently sued by a radical cleric and received death threats after she said she was "disgusted by women in niqab."
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