IHEYO

Women dressed in stark black, their faces veiled and their hands sometimes gloved, are becoming a common sight in Cairo, a trend that worries the government as it battles a lurch towards fundamentalism. Most Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab, which covers the hair, but the niqab, which covers the entire face, is becoming more popular on the streets of Cairo.

The issue has been brought into sharp focus following reports this week that Mohammed Tantawi, head of the Islamic Al-Azhar University, told a girl to remove her niqab when he toured a high school funded by his institution. Tantawi, the country's top religious authority, reportedly also said that he intends to ban the niqab at the university. The ministry of religious endowments has distributed booklets explaining that wearing a niqab is un-Islamic while the health ministry wants to ban doctors and nurses from wearing the austere veil.

A decision has also reportedly been taken to ban students from wearing the niqab in the residences of the state-run Cairo University, although the university authorities deny this is the case. Egypt has over the years witnessed a series of large-scale attacks by fundamentalist militants, starting with the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981.

This year, it arrested two cells of Islamists blamed for a bombing in a Cairo bazaar that killed a French teenager, and a botched jewellery store heist that killed four Christian Copts.
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