Egypt Ban On Face Veil In Schools Sparks Debate

Egypt’s Ministry of Education has prohibited the wearing of full-face veils in public and public schools, sparking debate on social media in the country’s most populous Arab country on Tuesday.

The government daily Akhbar al-Youm issued a new rule on school uniforms on Monday, which prohibits primary and secondary school students from “covering their faces.”

The decree states that the headscarf is “optional”, depending on “the wishes of the pupil, without pressure or coercion from anyone other than the legal guardian, who must be informed of this choice”.

While the majority of Egyptian women wear the headscarf, the niqab remains in the minority in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

“People are angry because the government has given no justification, it’s a tyrannical decision that invades privacy”, Mohammed reacted on X (ex-Twitter).

“No one is angry except supporters of the Taliban and the Islamic State (EI),” retorted al-Masri on the same network.

Ahmed Moussa, a talk-show host and staunch admirer of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi’s administration, lauded the announcement as “an important first step toward destroying extremism and correcting the situation in education, which has become a safe haven for Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups.”

Since Mr. Sissi removed President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013, the Brotherhood, which has been designated a “terrorist” organization, has been banned, and hundreds of its members and leaders have been slain or imprisoned.

However, for Internet users, the challenge of education in a country of 105 million people wracked by inflation and governmental debt lies elsewhere.”Is the niqab to blame for overcrowded classrooms, dilapidated equipment, and teacher difficulties?” cynically queried another user.

Cairo University, one of Egypt’s oldest and most famous universities, barred female instructors from wearing the niqab at the end of 2015, a decision affirmed by a Cairo administrative court in 2020.

The niqab, the most stringent form of the Islamic veil, is normally black and reveals just the eyes through a slit.