this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (37 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It should be their choice, but with guardians they’ll just grow up abused and school-less.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So, in order to not provoke their moronic parents, we should let them be oppressed. Got it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I feel like you misread my statement. Sorry if the English was wonky (I doubt it though).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

My reading was they expressed concern that the guardians who imposed face coverings on these girls would deny them education rather than give up the garment, then frustration that some people, like those guardians feel they have the right to impose such rules. Seems consistent to me.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

if their male guardians don't let them

when it comes to their choice of dress

Their choice huh

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah rhis is what happens when you take phrases out of context. I meant they should have the choice to not wear it if they don't want to. I explained a bit more about my position in other comments under this discussion.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

🤣 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm an ex Muslim and wore hijab for 5-6 years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What were your feelings about it at the time?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

At the time I wore it out of "choice" but in retrospect it's clear that I was indoctrinated. I got religious purely from wanting to be a "good kid", ended up hearing that women should wear hijab when they get their periods. I got it at 12 so I put it on. My dad was encouraging and to him it's a mix of religious reasons and feeling like I look like a decent girl on a society with little respect for women, I think he was protective and worried, not religious and dominating. He didn't have a "choice" either: you cover your women or you risk appearing as an immoral person (even if you understand that these things are not really related).

It felt bad for the first year because I was the only student in my class for a headscarf on from grade 6 to 8. In the middle east, women wearing hijab at younger ages + having darker skin is associated with poverty and ignorance, so people looked down on me but others were happy I was covered. After that it felt like shit, but I didn't see what I could do because "god said so". A year later I was reading the Quran and hated the verse about husbands told to beat their wives, I called a friend on the phone and cried as I talked about this. She agreed at the time and later became an atheist too. My faith started to turn into hate and resentment for god who made me "less than others". A year after that, I discover Slayer, I'm on the internet more often, and finally decided to take the hijab off. It was not a pleasant experience.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Baby steps.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Will this receive the same amount of outrage as the similar news from France?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

France has banned Hijabs and Abaya robes in schools not just Niqabs. Egypt is preventing people from hiding their face in school, France is doing a lot more. I don't think it's directly comparable considering the Niqab bans at least have a safety component. Whos safer because school kids cant wear head scarfs?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Devils advocate here: isn't the reasoning behind the hijab bans that it's sexist, not a safety issue?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Not really. It's a secular issue. France bans all religious displays in schools.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that's what I mean there's no aspect of safety there. I don't think it's less sexist to legislate that no girls or women in schools can wear them them than it is to choose to wear one though. And if we just assume it's sexist anyway, who is it hurting? It seems like over reach to use sexism as the reason to ban something that only effects the person who choses to do it. Does France ban any other sexist clothing, or just the ones muslim women wear? That may be a good insight into their decision making.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree in most cases. However it is an issue when it's no longer a choice.

Anecdotal, but a church/cult where I grew up and went to school, forbid women and girls to wear anything but skirts. Now a lot of them maybe preferred skirts over pants, but it was never their choice.

Gotta say I'm on the fence on this one. Women should be allowed to wear whatever the hell they want, but it is a problem when a garment is occasionally forced on only them. I have no good solution

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In France I imagine it's a choice more often than not, but if its an issue when it's no longer a choice, then a blanket ban on them in school poses the exact same problem as now many women who want to, no longer can or they face legal punishment. This ban likely applies to teachers too who are clearly old enough to make their own decisions.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, but would it have helped to ban skirts?

I think there are a handful of solutions, none of them include a ban. Give women more autonomy over their lives, spread awareness, give help to those stuck in a shitty household forced to wear a niqab or hijab, get schools to actively discuss this choice of garment with parents and the child of it is problematic, allow girls to speak up without fear in schools, etc.

Stuff like this will cause gradual change (that is already happening). It may not be a big flashy bang like the news of a ban, but it's actual gradual change.

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