‘Niqab’ falsely claimed to be obligatory: former mufti

CAIRO – 24 August 2017: Egypt’s former Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, said that Salafists’ claims that the “niqab” (cloth covering the face) is obligatory for women in Islam as a pretext for them to consider other Muslims faithless and thus take power.

Defending Islamic modernist Qasim Amin during a viva voce of a Master’s thesis at Cairo University, Gomaa denied the claim that Amin had called on Muslim women to remove the veil and disobey the commandments of Islam. Amin only called for removing the “niqab”, which is not obligatory, Gomaa said.

Gomaa blamed the researcher for using the writings of late journalist Muhammad Qutb, brother of former leading Muslim Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb, as a reference, as Muhammad had attacked everyone after the execution of his brother. “You didn’t read anything for Amin, and all you mentioned is apparent slander,” Gomaa added.

Qasim Amin was an Egyptian jurist and philosopher. He called for more rights for Egyptian women. Amin criticized the “niqab” in his book “The New Woman”, published in 1900, and described it as a form of men’s enslavement of women.