"Mnnnash reviews" in Egypt .. Exaggerate your face if you want to work

Hbadan Masri – Al Jazeera Net

From time to time, the niqab ban in Egypt is the subject of renewed debate, whether in the interest of the government or quite negatively, sometimes for the sake of security, sometimes as a foreigner, while his supporters defend the niqab as a personal freedom, that it can not be violated.

Hanan told Al Jazeera.net that, when she graduated, she had a mind that would not forget her. When the director of the medical facility that she said stated that she was not welcome, as long as she covered her face, he justified her position that dealing with the public requires revealing the face to see the expressions.

"When I tried to defend the niqab, the manager insisted on his job and asked me to change jobs and move on to another administrative job or to any other medical facility."

Similar cases

The case of Hanan is not the first: the student Sarah Abdel-Fattah tried to run her school to confuse scientific excellence and lack of honor to wear the veil, and when she went to see the complaint, it was did I meet the "critics of Mndnash", according to her on the Facebook page.

"For more than a year, she has been wearing the niqab and, despite her narrowness and problems, she has managed to overcome that," she said, pointing out that racism against the niqab, at work or otherwise , is not common among his veiled friends.

The reality of the veil in Egypt

The niqab debate is not limited to schools and businesses, where government statements on the niqab are published from time to time, the most recent being yesterday when Health Minister Hala Zayed denounced the method. Dressing up some health workers, criticizing wearing the niqab and covering the head of veiled women working in his area. .

Activists quoted the minister in an Egyptian conversation: "The shortage must be short, not long."

The statements of the Minister of Health, preceded in 2015 by the former president of the Cairo University, Jaber Nbadar, have prevented the badignment of dozens of veiled people in university hospitals, in addition to To prevent students from wearing it during exams.

The current president of the Cairo University, Mohamed Al-Khasht, reiterated the prohibition of female teachers under the pretext of the need to expose facial expressions and communicate with students of the university, in addition to many other universities that have applied the decision accordingly.

In the same context, public figures and the media frequently phoned to prevent the wearing of the veil, which led to a court action binding the House of Representatives and Al-Azhar to enact a law banning the wearing of the veil for security reasons. The file should be reviewed at the end of July.

Constitutional violation

For his part, the lawyer Mohamed Anwar believes that any decision to prohibit or prohibit the niqab is contrary to the law, the Constitution and international instruments relating to human rights, in addition of the Egyptian Constitution which provides for equality regardless of bad, color or belief. "But that does not apply, unfortunately, in the field entirely".

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Anwar said that asking the legislature to enact a law is in itself contrary to the principle of separation of powers, insofar as it can not compel the judiciary in the House of Representatives to pbad a law.

Anwar believes that there are thousands of women who wear the niqab in Egypt, especially in rural areas and the governorates of the Upper and the Delta, where the niqab is part of the customs and social values ​​as well as beliefs religious. "Therefore, to prevent it is a kind of suppression of the ideological and ideological freedoms, of the nudity that is diffused on the chains of the satellite under the pretext of personal freedom."