Posted on 05/05/2009 4:10:00 PM PDT by forkinsocket
CAIRO // Afaf al Sayed spent 10 years feeling like she was staring at life from inside a coffin. That is how she remembers the period between 1983 and 1992, when she wore a niqab, a variation on the Islamic veil worn by women that shrouds the entire face save for the eyes.
“There are small details that are still painful when I think about them after all those years,” said Ms al Sayed, 45, who is now the head of Heya, a feminist women’s organisation.
“I think during these years, I stopped looking at myself in the mirror, until one day, I did, and it was a horrible moment in my life,” she said. “I screamed at myself: ‘Who is this thing?’ I shut myself up in my room for three days, then I emerged after taking off these black things and the life I was burying myself behind. I felt born again, and started enjoying freedom, life and light again.”
Ms al Sayed’s decision is one that Egypt’s ministry of awqaf, or religious endowments, would like to propagate. Since late 2008, the ministry has pushed a quiet and controversial campaign to “educate” women that the niqab is a cultural norm inherited from pre-Islamic Bedouin traditions, rather from any religious obligation.
But opponents say the ministry’s programme amounts to a thinly veiled attempt to pander to political pressure from the West, where the niqab has emerged as a symbol of Islam’s oppression of women.
Common to both arguments is the perception that cultural coercion from abroad – religious programming beamed in by satellite from the Gulf states on one hand and liberal cultural values from the West on the other – is conspiring to influence Egypt’s traditionally moderate practice of the Islamic faith.
“What’s happening in Egypt is the law of American city hall. It’s being translated and enforced on all aspects of life,” said Sheikh Youssef al Badry, a conservative Islamic scholar. “The niqab is a must. They don’t want the niqab because they want to spread prostitution and illicit desires so that society will be disrupted.”
Ministry officials say the niqab’s popularity in Egypt comes directly from satellite channels, such as Al Nas, Al Rahma and Al Hikma, whose “satellite sheikhs” evangelise a more austere form of religious practice throughout the region.
“Unfortunately, this impression came through a cultural invasion, through satellite stations that spread Wahhabi or Gulf thought,” said Salem Abdel Gelil, an official at the awqaf ministry and the head of the niqab education campaign.
“They disseminate day and night that the niqab is a religious obligation.”
Mr Gelil’s campaign began late last year, when the ministry published a booklet, to be distributed throughout the country’s 50,000 government-managed mosques. The book’s publication followed another controversial decision in March 2008 by the ministry of health that required more than 9,000 “Munaqabat” health professionals in state-owned hospitals to expose their faces and hands at work.
Now, Mr Gelil is taking a more hands-on approach to spreading his message. In the past two weeks, he has conducted two “question-and-answer” sessions with the 14 munaqabat women who work at his own ministry. So far, none of the women has hung up their niqabs, but Mr Gelil remains sanguine.
“The result has been promising, thank God,” he said. “The 14 women who wear niqab and work in the ministry declared that this is a tradition, not a religion. They are still in the niqab because the role of the ministry is not to tell people not to wear it, but to raise awareness.”
If Mr Gelil’s idea of “raising awareness” means convincing women to expose their faces in public, however, he may have a difficult time.
The niqab is not an Egyptian tradition, but wearing it is a decision many women do not take lightly.
“I took the veil out of love for God and to please him. I was taught that the body of a Muslim woman is awrah [private] and should be covered,” said Hoda al Bendari, 39, who has worn the niqab for three years and who works as a manicurist for veiled women. “No book, not the president himself, could convince me to take off my niqab, which will be taken off only after I die.”
Women such as Ms al Bendari can find strong textual justification for their decision, said Sheikh al Badry, who emphasised that Islam imposes its strictures on no one. Muslim women come to the niqab willingly after the rigorous study of their faith, he said.
Among several justifications for the niqab that can be found in the hadiths, the Prophet Mohammed’s sayings and deeds, one states that Muslim women should expose their faces and hands while visiting Mecca for the Haj or pilgrimage. The passage strongly implies that such body parts should be covered at all other times, said Sheikh al Badry.
Beyond such “proof”, he said, Muslim thought teaches that women are weaker than men, who will tend to prey on women’s lust.
“Women are awrah and they are weak human beings,” said Sheikh al Badry. “The man is as a wolf, who, when he is alone with a woman, may hunt her. That’s why Islam goes with the principle that prevention is better than the cure.”
Other Egyptian religious authorities support the ministry’s efforts while acknowledging the challenges inherent in any government-led attempt to alter deeply entrenched cultural norms.
Gamal al Banna, the younger brother of Hassan al Banna who founded Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, said Islam should be practised in the way it was conceived: as a force of liberation for women.
“Neither hijab [veil] nor niqab are from God. Quite simply, hijab was present 2,000 years before Islam from the laws of Hammurabi,” he said, referring to a set of laws from the ancient Babylonian empire. “That is why we say that hijab was imposed on Islam, and not that Islam imposed the hijab.”
Mr al Banna said the hadiths offered by Sheikh al Badry – whom he said “should be put in a museum” – are spurious because they are not taken from the Quran.
“This is all nonsense,” said Mr al Banna, adding that the Quran mentions the word “hijab” only once to refer to the curtains that divided the Prophet Mohammed’s home from the mosque to which it was connected. “The niqab is a shame. It covers and destroys women’s personalities. How can she work or do anything with this cursed niqab?”
Looks like the muzzies might have a fifth column of their own to contend with.
If you look at pictures as recently as Nasser’s funeral, you’ll see Egyptian women in mini skirts.
They went under the veil after the 73’ war.
not much about this but Tunisian woman moved in next door to me a few years back when I had to live up north.
Over the course of two years she stopped wearing really short min skirts and started wearing pants etc
I moved away and decided a couple of years later to visit a few old friends and I decided to drop in to see her and her family
My shock, she was covered head to toe, so were her two girls, the koran was on the TV and pictures of her covered up were on the wall .
I and my wife nearly fainted, what ion earth has gone on, why has she gone all muslims now she lives here etc?
I would love to know as the only conclusion I know is that they felt lost while being here and felt by doing what she did was her way to be nearer to her home country
Islam has destroyed places like Lebanon, it has waged wars around the world and still does to this day but of course I don’t expect bozo the clown in the white house to know of this
In America, Muslimahs veiled head to toe should be refered to as “walking tents”.
Their hostile costume fairly screams, “Infidels!! We are not of your culture! We do not respect your laws that are not Sharia! Convert or die!!”
I think they are pititful. Just think ... to live their lives like that with no hope of heaven. Just pitiful.
All this jibber jabber and hand wringing over a VEIL???
What the heck is wrong with people? It’s a stupid piece of cloth for crying out loud. Meanwhile here in america, women scream about their right to murder babies.
Let’s keep our eye on the ball here folks. This ain’t important. Not even a little.
I observed an American woman wearing one of these “eyes only” veils in Seattle. Obviously, she had become connected with this disgusting practice through marriage or something like it. It made me want to vomit.
A veil made you want to vomit? What about abortion, child porn, gay marriage?
Used to that arent you?
f*ck off, jerk.
“I would love to know as the only conclusion I know is that they felt lost while being here and felt by doing what she did was her way to be nearer to her home country.”
Basically the Muzzies, even here, have their own policing system. You better not get caught without the Holloween Costume on or you will be in BIG TROUBLE, along with your family...and they are taking names.
But it’s worse in Europe. If a 15 year old muzzie girl gets married off and then goes to a “women’s” shelter, she is immediately sent back to the abuser. The shelters do not want to get in trouble interfering with a religious issue. If the girl isn’t muzzie, she’ll be taken care of and the hubby will get to spend some serious time in jail.
WELCOME TO MULTICULTURALISM!!
(and for saying stuff like that, Savage is banned from England)
“Eyes only” veiled Muslimahs ARE important!
Their kind kill hundreds in the Middle East, mostly those who are “not Muslim enough”.
The “walking tents” ARE a threat to us “infidels”.
Those poor poor brutalized women that are FORCED to wear that insidious piece of cloth in front of their face are a threat to you?
How is that? Are these explosive veils?
Hey, nice try, ol’ mamalukeemuzzieblowmeselfupnee.
Female suicide bombers were unknown prior to 2002.
But now they are extremely effective against American soldiers who tend to be solicitous toward females of any group.
Those walking tents can conceal lots of explosives.
Especially when they’re leading small children by the hand.
Do you really wwant to continue this discussion?
Do you?
Are you also scared of amish buggies?
How about rodeo clowns?
or “little” people?
Take your hot milk and go to bed, my child.
The Amish and rodeo clowns never killed anybody.
Nor did they ever threaten to do so.
And if they take off the veils all that will change, right?
Every once in a while a first class turd enters the discussion. Apologies if my earlier remark was too blunt for the regulars on this beat.
So now you think it’s safe to come back when it’s two against one, eh? I know who I’d label a “turd” around here.
Ooooooh, little “mamalukee” called me a t#rd.
I’m so crushed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.