Egyptian Actress Sparks Controversy By Removing Veil

And American feminists stand with these savages — so much so they have appointed a vicious sharia promoter, Linda Sarsour, as their leader.

Egyptian Actress Sparks Controversy By Removing Veil

MEMRI, December 2018:

A draft law to ban the niqab (full-face veil) in public places, which was recently submitted by Egyptian MPs, stirred a heated public debate in the country, and articles for and against it were published in the Egyptian press.

The issue of the Islamic dress code for women periodically comes up for debate in Egyptian society. This also happened several months ago after Egyptian actress Hala Shiha, who has been living in Canada for the last few years, announced that she would return to acting and appeared in the media with her head uncovered. This announcement came 12 years after the actress quit show business to take up a religious lifestyle, as part of which she donned a hijab (which covers a woman’s hair and shoulders but not her face) and occasionally even a niqab. According to reports, she has also shut down a Facebook page on which she used to post religious materials preaching Islam and promoting the veil.

Shiha with and without the hijab (image: Al-Shurouq, Egypt, August 9, 2018)

In an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabi’, during which she was photographed bareheaded alongside the daily’s editor Hani ‘Izzat, Shiha said that the decision to resume her acting career had been difficult and had been taken after deep deliberation. In an interview on the Egyptian satellite channel Dream TV she said that she stopped wearing the niqab when she moved to Canada, since it was at odds with the environment there. She added that her removal of the veil did not mean she had left the religion: “The most important thing for a woman is [her] morals, and the hijab is not a measure of religious piety at all… I know many were enraged by my discarding of the hijab, but the hijab is [just one] part of the religion, not the entire religion, and I have not left [Islam]… Every person goes through different stages in life and various upheavals, during which he learns a great deal.”

Shiha with Hani ‘Izzat (image: Al-Yawm Al-Sabi’, Egypt, August 8, 2018)

Shiha’s decision and her statements about it sparked a heated debate on social media and Egypt‘s traditional media. Some – including Egypt‘s Religious Endowments Minister and other Islamic preachers, as well as Salafis and women activists of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – opposed her action and called on her to repent, while others – mainly liberal intellectuals and journalists – applauded her and launched hashtags like “#Waiting for you, Hala.” Reactions in support of Hala were also published by journalists and columnists in the Egyptian press. They wrote that the decision whether to don the hijab was hers to make and nobody had the right to interfere in it. Many of them also stated that Hala was an example of a broader phenomenon of women who fell victim to MB preaching, and that her current decision is an act of defiance against the MB and another sign that the Salafis and the movements of political Islam, which are trying to force their “distorted” views on Egyptian society, are collapsing.

This report reviews the debate sparked in Egypt by Hala Shiha’s decision to stop wearing the hijab.

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