WATANI International
3 April 2011
Even though it was business as usual in Cairo last Tuesday, other Egyptian towns and villages, including those in Minya in Upper Egypt, saw a day during which non-veiled women were weirdly absent from public life.
Market places, means of transportation, offices, and even schools were almost women-free as many women and young women stayed or were kept at home for fear of Salafi threats. The day before had seen the propagation of stories on Facebook and mobile phones that any woman on the street not adhering to “Islamic dress” would be splashed with acid or abducted. Since it was not clear who could be targeted, even women who wear hijab but otherwise wear normal clothes felt threatened. Human rights activist Nadi Atef described the threats as psychological warfare that terrorises citizens and contradicts the most basic human rights and religious values.
Non-veiled women, stay home
On Facebook, a number of women’s organisations and human rights NGOs cited their rejection and condemnation of the Salafi threats. They snubbed what they described as the Salafi custody imposed on them. Religious values, the women wrote, are neither based on threat or intimidation. “The Salafi threats take us back to the dark ages,” they said. The activists demanded that the security authorities and the military take action to deter fundamentalist groups.
On the other hand, Egyptian young women formed a Facebook group to challenge these threats. Under the title “I am a young Egyptian woman, and I will go out every day”, one young woman wrote, “I am neither terrified nor intimidated by the threats of Salafi terrorists, because our God is the King of Peace.”
The threats were linked to a demonstration which was waged last Tuesday in front of the State Council, the highest administrative court in Egypt. That day the court saw the case filed by a number of Salafi lawyers against the Coptic Church to demand that Camelia Shehata—a 25-year-old wife of a Coptic priest who had fled her home a year ago in the wake of domestic problems, and who Salafis claim had then converted to Islam but was being held captive by the Church in some unknown convent—be found and returned to Islam. The court postponed the verdict till 19 April, a move which spurred discontent among the Salafi demonstrators.
The Grand Imam of al-Azhar—the only authority in charge of registering converts to Islam—had more than once declared Shehata had never converted. His claim was confirmed by the Grand Mufti Sheikh Ali Gomaa, and by the prominent Islamic scholar Selim al-Awwa. But the Salafis insist that Shehata, together with other non-specified Muslim women converts, are being kept in captivity by the Church. The Church has repeatedly denied such claims, saying it would go against all the principles of Christianity.
Virtue imposed
The crusade by Salafis to spread their version of virtue did not stop at that. At the al-Azhar University branch in the Delta town of Mansoura, women students wearing the niqab, the full-face veil, forced those wearing hijab to don even more conservative garb. When the latter group filed a complaint to the dean about the matter, nothing was done.
The same thing happened at another branch of the same university in the east Delta town of Zagazig and in Alexandria.
In Sadat City west of the Delta, a Salafi mob gathered at the home of a woman whom they claimed was of bad repute, threw her furniture out of her home and set it on fire. They insisted that she should leave town, claiming they would “purge the town from the likes of her”. The police was able to take matters into its own hands, and an investigation is ongoing. The woman left town.
No beer
The village of Qasr al-Bassel in Fayoum some 100km southwest of Cairo was the scene of a fight with firearms between a number of villagers and a group of Salafis. The fight erupted when the Salafis intercepted the villagers as they sat at a roadside café and some of them were drinking beer. A 24-year-old waiter named Abu-Hamed Omar Abdel-Wahed was killed, and eight were injured and moved to hospital. The café was ruined.
The local police and the army moved in and brought matters under control, but no-one was caught.