The hijab is now so prevalent in Egypt that an unveiled woman is generally taken to be a Christian or a nonpracticing Muslim, and most swimming pools now have women-only days. But has the spread of the hijab done anything for public morality?
Some Wahhabis, in fact, deem harassment a just punishment for a woman who exposes any part of her body. “I challenge the notion that a single woman in a niqab has been molested,” said the Salafist preacher Abdallah Badr on his religious TV show, referring to the Islamic full-face veil. “The women who get harassed are those in slutty clothing.”
That assertion is simply not true. The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights study also showed that a woman’s dress had no effect on whether she was molested; in fact, the majority of victims were veiled.
“The root cause is the contempt with which women are viewed,” said Dr. Mohamed Abdelghani, a British-based psychiatrist quoted on the BBC’s Arabic website.
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