Cairo - Egyptian students on Wednesday protested their exclusion from university dormitories because they wear the niqab, a veil that covers the full face. The issue has come to the fore following a newspaper report quoting Sheikh Mohammed al-Tantawi, the head of Cairo's centuries-old al-Azhar University, as saying the niqab was "a tradition that has nothing to do with Islamic faith and obligations," and vowing to ban it from schools affiliated with al-Azhar.
Last week, Egyptian Minister of Higher Education Hani Hilal announced that female students had been ordered to remove the niqab upon entering the university dormitory as a means of preventing men from sneaking into the dormitory.
He said that 15 young men had been caught sneaking into female universities wearing the niqab as a disguise last year.
Egypt's Islamist opposition has rallied to oppose the ban. Wednesday's protest was organized by the student wing of the Labour Party, whose license has been suspended since May 2000.
"Banning the niqab in universities is part of the country's tendency toward the secularization of the state and the declared war on Islamic symbols," protest organizer Ahmed al-Kurdi told the German Press Agency
