Tag: niqab

Canal Ropes Company Workers’ Strike

Posted on 12/09/200809/02/2021 By 3arabawy

I took the pic above Tuesday in Port Said, as the Canal Ropes Company strikers were about to break their Ramadan fast at sunset. The worker in the ground reaching with his hand to take the dates is a Coptic worker, named Labib Guergiss (Also seen in the pic below).

Virtually all workers I meet during strikes, including their leaders, tend to be religiously devout. Many of the Muslims have beards, prayer marks on their foreheads (zebiba), and pray regularly.

The women workers are usually dressed in higab, if not niqab.

The Copts have crosses tattooed on their arms, a practice common among middle and working class Christians. The religiosity however does NOT translate itself mechanically into:

1- Sectarian attitude among the workers from two sects: On the contrary, unity is strongly forged among the strikers, and among the newly rising layer of strike leaders there is a significant number of Copts.

2- A political affiliation or sympathy to the Muslim Brotherhood: No, the biggest and most organized opposition force, as the cliche goes, is not active among labor circles. Its base of support lies mainly among the middle class professionals, lower middle classes and the Islamized sections of our elite. Their capitalist economic agenda, and vague oscillating stands towards privatization, weak intervention on behalf of workers in industrial conflicts that erupt in their parliamentarian constituencies and the general retreat the organization is going through since the 2006 crackdown, means an confused stand towards the strike wave. I usually ask strike leaders I interview on their views regarding the MBs. The responses vary from overt hostility to “they are good people. They do charity.” But in almost all cases, the strikers cite no direct help from the group, let alone leadership.

3- Hostility to the left: Being religious, contrary to the stereotype, does not mean a hostility to leftists and secular activists. Unlike the liberal secularists, radical leftists have a different stand towards religion, and do not put religion as the enemy or as the focal point of the current malaise. I found the workers themselves when they are struggling, to be welcoming to any sincere effort to help them, whether it’s coming from a secular, an Islamist or the devil. What matters for them is who does what during the strike to make it successful? Who stands by them, who stands against them? Who puts 110% effort into a solidarity campaign with them, and who doesn’t give a shit? Some of the strike leaders I know in industrial and service sectors are increasingly describing themselves as “socialists” or “Marxists” while carefully observing the prayer timings, fasting Ramadan, and have zebibas on their foreheads. Personally they are religious, but the political program they present and advocate is left-leaning and secular. There is a clear shift in the mood among the workers and public to the left. It’s been a slow, incremental change that started with the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada eight years ago… a change that has been missed by the Western journalists and researchers obsessed with stories on terrorism, the veiled oppressed women, and the Red Sea Rivera.

4- Subordination of women in the industrial action: The participation of the women workers in the strike wave is an amazing story. They triggered the Winter of Labor Discontent, produced strike leaders and trade union activists, and are defying established gender roles. A Westernized feminist who looks at the pix of the strikers and finds the women to be veiled or in niqab and thus draws a negative conclusion about their status, will miss the whole point.

Court rules against AUC niqab ban

Posted on 12/06/200715/01/2021 By 3arabawy

While I’m not of course a fan of the Niqab, but women have the right to choose whatever they wanna wear, whether it’s a mini-skirt or a full face niqab. That’s why I was glad to read this the other day:

Egypt court rules against US university on face veil
Sun 10 Jun 2007
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO (Reuters) – An Egyptian court ruled on Saturday that a U.S.-accredited university in Cairo was wrong to bar a female scholar who wears an Islamic face veil from using its facilities, court sources and a lawyer for the woman said.
The American University in Cairo, seen as a bastion of Western liberal education in Egypt, had revoked the woman’s longstanding library privileges after she donned the niqab, a face veil that leaves only the wearer’s eyes uncovered.
In its ruling, a special chamber of the High Administrative Court upheld a 2001 court ruling that the school could not bar Iman al-Zainy from its campus over the niqab because her decision to veil was a matter of personal and religious freedom.
Hossam Bahgat, a human rights lawyer who was part of Zainy’s legal team, described the ruling as a precedent-setting victory for “women’s autonomy over their body and dress code”.
“The court said in the strongest of terms that it is up to women to decide about their clothing, and that women should not be discriminated against because of the clothes that they choose to wear,” he told Reuters. “A complete ban on the niqab is now outlawed as a matter of principle.”
The American University in Cairo said it was consulting with lawyers following the decision, but that some of the principles mentioned by the court appeared to support its position.
Court sources said Saturday’s ruling does allow the university some leeway in placing restrictions on the niqab due to public necessity. Female students, for example, could be required to reveal their faces at the university gate to a designated male security guard or female staff.
In 2001, Zainy was a doctoral student of English at Egypt’s religious al-Azhar University but had for over a decade held privileges at the American University in Cairo library.
Bahgat said Zainy, who has since obtained her Ph.D. and was pursuing the case out of principle, did not object to revealing her face at the campus gate for security reasons.
SECURITY CONCERNS
The American University in Cairo, whose downtown campus is a prominent central Cairo landmark, said that while it recognized the need to respect the religious values of students, it had barred the niqab due to safety concerns.
Egyptian authorities have feared that Islamic militant groups that fought a 1992-1997 campaign to topple the government could use the niqab as a disguise.
The American University in Cairo has been seen as a potential target for Islamic militant groups, and students and faculty must already pass through a metal detector and show identification cards to guards to gain access.
“The policy prohibiting face veiling was established by the university because all members of the AUC community have a basic right to know with whom they are dealing, whether in class, labs or anywhere else on campus. It is not a religious issue,” the university said in a statement after the ruling.
The university said the court verdict was not the final word in the case. Court sources and Bahgat said the decision, by a special chamber of the court’s most senior judges that is tasked with unifying conflicting legal rulings, could not be appealed.
While the niqab is banned at the university, students are allowed to wear the more common Islamic headscarf, the hijab, which covers a woman’s hair but leaves her face visible. Many Muslim women see the veil as a sign of piety and morality.
Students at Egyptian state universities are generally allowed to wear the niqab, although they have sometimes faced resistance by university administrations.

Rights group condemns discrimination against veiled students

Posted on 11/10/200603/04/2015 By 3arabawy

No this is not in France, this is in Egypt…

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Press Release- 11 October 2006

Expulsion of Veiled Students from University Hostel Arbitrary and Discriminatory
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) today condemned the decision by Helwan University’s President to expel female students who choose for religious reasons to wear the niqab, or face veil, from the university’s hostel. The EIPR also regretted the statement by the Minister of Higher Education in support of the decision, which violates the constitutional protections of equality, religious freedom and personal liberty.

The only thing worse than the arbitrary interference with women’s right to choose their dress code is to deprive them of government-subsidized accommodation and meals solely on the basis of a decision they made in accordance with their religious beliefs.”

The EIPR rejected the use of security concerns to justify the discriminatory practice, especially since the students pledged to remove the veil for identity checks to female guards at the hostel’s entrance. Other universities still allow veiled students to live in university hostels, as did Helwan University itself before the sudden emergence of “security concerns” this year.

Banning the wearing of the niqab is an illegitimate restriction of the right to manifest one’s religion or belief, enshrined in Article 18 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Egypt in 1982. The United Nations committee that monitors the implementation of the Covenant ruled on 18 January 2005 that banning the niqab at universities in Uzbekistan violates the Covenant. The ruling said that “to prevent a person from wearing religious clothing in public or private may constitute a violation of article 18, paragraph 2, which prohibits any coercion that would impair the individual’s freedom to have or adopt a religion.”

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court (SAD) had annulled in 1989 a decision by Ain Shams University’s President to ban the niqab on campus. However, another panel of the same Court ruled in 1999 in support of a niqab ban imposed by Mansoura University. The SAD’s Chamber for Unification of Principles is currently considering the question in an attempt to establish a legal precedent on niqab restrictions. In February 2005, the EIPR submitted to the SAD a brief on the Egyptian government’s legal obligations under international law to protect women’s freedom to wear the niqab.