The Egyptian government has announced a ban on the wearing of the face-covering niqab in schools from the beginning of the next term on 30 September.
Education Minister Reda Hegazy made the announcement on Monday, adding that students would still have the right to choose whether to wear a headscarf, but insisted it must not cover their faces.
He also said that the child’s guardian should be aware of their choice, and that it must have been made without any outside pressure.
This might prevent a lot of women from going to school or work if their male guardians don’t let them step out without Niqab or Buqra (which is the real problem).
I wish people would just leave women the fuck alone when it comes to their choice of dress and put this much needed focus into ensuring that all women are able to make their own choices.
You can’t even write 2 sentences without contradicting yourself. It’s their choice, but their male guardian wouldn’t let them out without it?
It should be their choice, but with guardians they’ll just grow up abused and school-less.
Force kids to have to go to school? That’s what western nations do. Parents get in huge trouble for not making sure their kids are in school.
Wherever there is poverty and lack of trust in authorities, there will be a shit ton of kids out of school and unaccounted for until they slip through the cracks.
Not sure what the situation is in Egypt, but seems like that would be a great way to get these people to pull their daughters out of regular schools and start homeschooling them, giving them the absolute bare minimum education they can get away with, and further cut them off from the world.
And possibly a few would go full psycho and do some honor killing bullshit “I’ll be damned if I let my daughter out of the house with her face uncovered, I’d rather kill her”
Homeschooling isn’t allowed in the majority of places, although i’m unsure about Egypt.
According to Wikipedia the status isn’t quite clear in Egypt.
Information seems kind of sparse at least on the English language parts of the internet that I can easily search but the gist I was able to get (not that I’m super confident in this being correct) is that children need to be enrolled in a school between the ages of 4 and 14, but some schools allow homeschooling as long as they take the required exams in school. And of course some parents just do what they want to anyway regardless of the law.
Based on that, I could imagine some parents begrudgingly allowing their daughters to go to school up until they turn 14 and then not allowing them to continue beyond that due to this change when otherwise they might have.
I found this in Arabic that explains it quite well. In some situations, parents are able to home school their children: if schools are bad and students don’t perform as well (or lose their “morals”), if they need assisted learning, or if they are high school students they can take some school courses online and only attend the exams (such as doing the IGCSE). Also seems like there are some institutions that help parents home school children.
https://nooun.net/اولادنا/different-options-to-educate-your-children#i-3
We had a building guard in the apartment block where my parents lived who was an Egyptian national and had a daughter and a son and refused to send his daughter to school even though it was illegal in Jordan to not do so. However, most likely due to shitty beliefs + bad economy + Jordanian law for foreigners means that his daughter never made it to school and was just “married off” as soon as possible. My parents pleaded with him right and left but he would not budge. Reporting it to the authorities would most likely mean the girl would have been mistreated. I’m in no way saying this is a normal thing in Egyptian society based on this one perdon, but I’m trying to say that it happens a lot with a certain demographic and those kids need our help as adults around them.
I found this in Arabic that explains it quite well. In some situations, parents are able to home school their children: if schools are bad and students don’t perform as well (or lose their “morals”), if they need assisted learning, or if they are high school students they can take some school courses online and only attend the exams (such as doing the IGCSE). Also seems like there are some institutions that help parents home school children.
https://nooun.net/اولادنا/different-options-to-educate-your-children#i-3
We had a building guard in the apartment who was an Egyptian national had a daughter and a son and refused to send his daughter to school even though it was illegal in Jordan to not do so. However, most likely due to shitty beliefs + bad economy + Jordanian law for foreigners means that his daughter never made it to school and was just “married off” as soon as possible. My parents pleaded with him right and left but he would not budge. Reporting it to the authorities would most likely mean the girl would have been mistreated. I’m in no way saying this is a normal thing in Egyptian society based on this one perdon, but I’m trying to say that it happens a lot with a certain demographic and those kids need our help as adults around them.
I am not aware how this is in Egypt, but I grew up in Jordan and in the early 2000’s people were still sending their boys to private nice schools and their girls to crappy public schools and sometimes pull them out before they could get the national diploma (called tawjihi). I also know for a fact that a lot of the women I worked with in the same workplace were only allowed to do so because they wear hijab and it’s a teaching job with a gender-segregated teacher’s room. It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking, it should never happen, but when something like their dress code is banned from their workplace, then you’re just setting life for them on Difficult. They are vulnerable and are in more need of direct intervention and help than they are in need of a change of law.
So, in order to not provoke their moronic parents, we should let them be oppressed. Got it.
I guess being from the middle east myself and having experineced this shit firsthand, yes - it is better for them to still have access to the workplace and school. Nothing in what I said supports guardians treating their children like shit or thinking they have any way in the live sofnwomen aged 18 and above. Ultimately the problem is women having less freedom, and I don’t see how restricting that further with bans will do anyone any good.
Problems where the symptoms are fixed will still have root causes that run deeper and deeper. If you want these women out of these horrible situations and life, this is a bad way to do it.
Yea, cuz they’d get more oppressed if provoked. I’m not sure if I believe in that but that’s what they’re saying.
I feel like you misread my statement. Sorry if the English was wonky (I doubt it though).
Learn to read. The 2 statements that were written are not contradictory.
Their choice huh
Good thing in the US we all have complete freedom in how we can dress. We would never persecute people for not dressing in the way our society says they should be dressing based on their genitals. Er… Wait.
(Yes I know it’s not the same, but it comes from the same place of ignorance, and this is exactly where we are headed if we allow it to continue to escalate)
Why are you talking about the US to me?
You think you’ve found some logical inconsistency, but you haven’t. They’re talking about IN GENERAL, people need to stfu about women’s clothing. Including the men in an unapologetically patriarchal country.
Bullshit! In all the free countries of the world where women can dress whatever they want, you see face tattoos, extreme body modifications, hairs of every color and not once you see women actively deciding to cover their head and faces like you see in Muslim countries, so fuck you with that rhetoric that this is what “women want”
Okay, let me explain my position better since it seems like people think this was badly worded.
For me, the one thing that should be protected is the absolute choice to wear what you want as a woman, and since hijab is forced on a large number of women, be it in psychological or physical or emotional, there should be all sorts of programs and help and support they can get especially as teens or children. I don’t think banning it is helpful in this way, as in I don’t think it’s effective. The real issue is that control is being exerted on these women. Putting more control over them from the opposite direction is giving them more shit to deal with. What Egypt or France should have done was have a long conversation with the parents and girls who wear hijab and make it easy for these girls to get support to stop wearing it. That’s how you get good results. Banning a piece of clothing is often more of a political gesture.
Edit: I also want to say that that position is not what I meant to convey in the paragraph. Sorry if it was badly worded but I feel like when read alongside of the first paragraph above it, it’s more clear that what I mean is that women are forced to wear it by their guardian and parents and that this should not be the case. I didn’t think I had to explicity say “ofc many women are forced to wear it and this is wrong” because I thought that was obvious. My mistake, I guess I should be more explicit with such controversial topics.
🤣 What the hell is this comment? You honestly believe women want to wear black beekeeper suits?
I can’t believe how blind people are to the suffering and degradation of women brought on by the Muslim fate.
Imagine they required, instead of women, all black people to wear this shit? Would you be here telling people “jUsT lEt bLaCk pEoPlE wEaR wHaT tHeY wAnT!”
These outfits, and forced make guardianship are inhumane vile bullshit and needs to be eradicated.
Learn to read, my g.
I’m an ex Muslim and wore hijab for 5-6 years.
I know alot of women who do love to wear it
Agreed. I don’t understand why this is so difficult a concept for people who claim to be trying to help women. Banning certain head garments because they’re “symbolic of women’s oppression” is just another way of restricting women’s choices and doesn’t promote their independence at all. Just let women choose how to dress themselves, same as men, it’s really not that complicated.
If their guardian decides, its not “their choice”'. How are you even agreeing with the statement above?
I’m talking about women, not their guardian. I don’t think parents should be able to force their children to wear restrictive clothing, unless there’s some sort of medical reason for it. Certainly not for religious reasons.
The statement seemed to me to say it should be their choice and not a “guardian”. How are you confused by the response above?
This is the beauty of the French system, it’s all religious paraphernalia banned in schools.
I feel like France is whacko. Religion is a normal part of human existence. Why would I prevent children from displaying these sentiments or developing parts of their personality that have a spiritual or religious connection? What kind of jerk would I need to be? 😬
That’s like saying slavery is a normal part of human existence because we’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
Why would you want children indoctrinated into a system of beliefs that reject reality? Only a jerk would want that.
Is it really the same? Slavery vs spirituality and following a religious path? 😬 Does it cause the same type of harm? How are these comperable?
But yeah, I do agree that just because people have done soemthing for X years does not make it legitimate.
deleted by creator
The problem isn’t any spiritual or religious connection the children form. The problem is that most monotheistic religions are very rigid in their exclusive prerogative of interpretation concerning all things fundamental and truth-related.
Having more than one exclusively-dominant religion represented in any one space must lead to unsolvable conflict. Contradicting absolutes cannot tolerate each other.
Given that a functioning state must necessarily assume the role of a sovereign, banning religion from public spaces is pretty much the only solution for preventing religious conflicts.
I agree with what you say about religion. However, I don’t agree that bans are useful or effective. Doesn’t seem to be “preventing religious conflicts” all that much imo.
It’s not about preventing religious conflicts. It’s about not giving those conflicts a forum at school, the place where children learn to be tolerant from people who aren’t their potentially fundamentally religious parents.
But that was the last sentence in your previous comment.
Exactly. No one is saying those women should be forced to wear a Niqab by society. We are actually saying the exact opposite, Egyptian women should be more free to take the hiajb or niqab off if they like, and not have to live with legal or societal consequences.
There are feminist organizations already working on that. It’s not like the only two choices are a ban or no ban.
That’s one way to solve the issue in a method that works, rather than going around to destroy all “symbols of oppression”. Like go ahead and bash at all these symbols, but make sure you don’t bash women along with it.
My understanding is that feminists themselves are split on this, sad as that is. At least with respect to the ban in France, I know some feminists have argued in favor of a ban on the hijab, exactly using the “symbol of oppression” argument. I don’t pretend to know what the divide in opinion is among feminists, percentage-wise, but clearly a significant contingent of them are supportive of this bullshit.
Again, I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept, but it apparently is. That, or my standards for human intelligence are just too high. Probably the latter.
One reason may be that Hijab and Niqab are politicized. Culture wars are happening on the expense of these women who just want a normal life and basic human rights.
Edit: I also just read the news article on Aljazera Arabic and one thing I did like is that they emphasized that all female students are free to wear Hijab as long as it’s their choice and they are not being forced by parents, but there is a full ban on face covers for school-aged girls. This changes my view on a bit, I think up to a certain age it should not be okay to come to school with a totally covered face (unless it’s for some reason necessary). However, once you get to high school level or bans in the workplace, it gets problematic.
I would still have much rather seen schools take a bigger active role in the lives of students who wear the Niqab and discuss the issues with the parents.
Problem is while other hijabs might be voluntary I don’t think anyone voluntarily wears a niqab
I agree that this aspect of it makes this issue very complicated. I wore a hijab aged 12 (out of choice, but really it was religious indoctrination) and took it off at 17. Almost every other Hijabi and Niqabi I know doesn’t really want to wear it or wishes it was not part of their lives or a religious obligation. A large number of said women eventually took it off. And of course a handful wanted to wear it and enjoy the look of modesty.
However, how does banning the Niqab help any of these women? 😬
One argument my partner made while discussing this is that it could help some women forced to wear it to be able to take it off… But I doubt that is the situation in Egypt given the culture, traditions, and law.
I know several women who wear the niqab by choice, and in the face (pun not intended) of social pressure.
That completely misses the point. The issue is that women should be allowed to wear whatever they want, same as men do. Banning a garment, even when no woman elects to wear it, serves no purpose except to restrict women’s choices.
not trying to shit stir, but can men really wear balaclavas anywhere they want?
I’ve seen plenty of delivery people wearing them during the colder months in my city. Since they aren’t worn for religious reasons, I suspect most men don’t wear them indoors, but I’m unaware of any law that prohibits them from doing so. Sure, maybe there are some high-security places where you wouldn’t be allowed to wear anything that covers your face, but that applies equally to men and women.
Covering your face in public space is banned in France.
The problem is, you know most (80-90%) of these girls are forced by their parents to wear religious clothing. Not doing so will result in beatings or, when they’re older, being kicked out of the house.
How are you, as a society, going to protect these children? Just sitting behind your keyboard philosophizing that you shouldn’t restrict their free choice does not protect them at all, as history proves.