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.
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.