CAIRO, Dec 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Cairo court has ruled that a private Egyptian university cannot ban a visiting female student from entering campus in a face veil, a court source said Tuesday.
The court ruled Monday that Iman Mohammed al-Zainy, studying for a doctorate at the Islamic university of Al-Azhar, could enter the American University in Cairo (AUC) to use the library while dressed in the "niqab" veil, which covers the entire face except for the eyes.
Zainy had been told by guards at AUC that she had to remove her niqab for security reasons if she wanted to enter the compound.
But the court has ordered AUC to allow the student to enter the campus on the grounds that wearing the veil was a matter of personal and religious freedom, the source said.
A 1994 ministry of education decree bans the niqab at Egyptian government universities other than religious institutions such as Al-Azhar.
Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court upheld the 1994 ban in 1996.
In practice, however, many state universities allow the niqab on campus, commissioning female security personnel to carry out identity checks on
niqab-wearing women, notably before exams.
In 1993, a reason given in support of the imminent ban on niqab was that men seeking to commit violent acts on the campuses often dressed up as women in
niqab in order to gain access to the area.
In addition, campus guards at Cairo University also said that they support the ban as it makes it harder for students to cheat during exams by having other students take the tests for them.
Egypt was subjected to several deadly attacks, including assassination attempts on several high-level government officials by extremist groups opposed to President Hosni Mubarak's secular government.
Mubarak has been criticized by many Egyptians and Western human rights groups for his crackdown on anti-government Islamic groups in the country.
