A Veiled Revolution

[00:00:06.49] [WOMEN CHANTING]

[00:00:19.47] Women in the mosque-- a revolution in Egypt, where the mosque has long been a bastion of men's power. Though Muslim women have the same religious duties as men, in the past, women were expected to worship and pray at home. But these women represent a movement that is changing not only the face of the mosque, but the streets of Cairo itself.

[00:01:24.18] Cairo is a sprawling cosmopolitan city of 11 million people. Although Egypt is a Muslim state, women on the streets appear little different from women in the West. For the last 50 years, middle class women have worn Western dress-- their skirts short, their heads uncovered. This dress distinguishes them from more traditional women, who continue to wear what they have always worn-- a long full dress and head scarf.

[00:02:06.49] Today, middle class women are covering themselves up again. A new style of conservative dress is appearing on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities. It began in the early '70s, when women started to cover their hair with scarves or turbans. Now, some have lengthened their skirts or wear full length, fitted dresses. Others have put on loose gowns and more enveloping head dresses.

[00:02:45.96] [INAUDIBLE] is 25 years old. She was 19 when she first put on what she calls Islamic dress. She says she's obeying the Koran, which tells women to dress modestly and cover their heads.

[00:03:01.35] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:03:35.58] Nabila is unmarried and lives at home with her parents. Since most Cairo stores still sell only Western fashions, Nabila, with the help of her mother, designs and sews her own modest dresses.

[00:03:55.44] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:04:37.77] Nabila works in an office, like thousands of other young women. This is something new in Egypt. Until recently, respectable women did not work outside the home, in the company of strange men. Although the economic situation has changed, and women must go out to work, moral altitudes have not changed. Now, more than ever, a woman must be careful of her reputation in public.

[00:05:05.97] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:05:36.63] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:06:17.30] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:06:47.31] In the increasingly crowded streets, jammed together on the back trams and buses, women and men are in constant physical contact. Such closeness is thought dangerous in this society, where even casual meetings between men and women are considered to be potentially sexual. So this new style of dress does provide some kind of protection for women, as it is a clear statement of their respectability.

[00:07:20.67] More and more women are beginning to wear Islamic dress, not only secretaries and clerks, but engineers, like this woman in Cairo's TV studios. Half the people employed here are women. Of these, 70% are wearing some form of modest dress. Noelle [INAUDIBLE] is head of all news transmissions in Egypt and has been working in television for 20 years. One of the first generation of women university graduates to work in TV, she has always worn Western dress. These days, she finds young graduates choosing to where modest dress. How does she feel about this transformation?

[00:08:17.54] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:08:48.60] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

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[00:10:32.92] For a small group of women, keeping the faith means more than simply wearing modest dress. Like Nabila's friend Nagla, they cover their faces with heavy veils and their hands with gloves.

[00:10:48.98] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:11:43.48] Veiled women like Nagla say they wish to emulate the wives of the prophet Muhammad, who were hidden from public view. But other women feel that a dress like Nabila's is modest enough, and that veiling the face is more than is necessary.

[00:11:59.38] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:13:05.16] Does wearing the veil mean a woman must stay at home? The simple issue of dress, then, is not so simple, for it raises basic questions about the proper role of women in a modern Islamic society. Nagla's brother, a local imam, believes in a literal interpretation of the Koran.

[00:13:26.37] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:14:25.79] But Egyptian women, despite tradition and expectation, have not stayed at home. Even when fully veiled, women took to the streets to demonstrate in the 1919 revolt against British rule. One of these intrepid and patriotic women was the young Ceza Nabarawi. Now 86, she and Hoda Shaarawi were the founders of Egyptian feminism. In 1923, they were the first Egyptian women to dramatically and publicly cast off the veil.

[00:15:03.82] [SPEAKING FRENCH]

[00:16:12.44] After Ceza and Hoda's dramatic gesture in 1923, upper and middle class Egyptian women went on to express their freedom by rejecting the veil and traditional dress and adopting Western clothes. They became a strong and dynamic force in Egyptian political life, fighting and winning campaigns for the vote, equal education, and for limiting the age of marriage for girls.

[00:16:36.92] In the '50s, they were at the forefront of demonstrations demanding Egyptian independence. Yet today, their granddaughters seem to be retreating behind the veil again. How to do the old fighters for women's rights feel about this?

[00:16:53.48] Certainly, this covering of the face is, I believe, dangerous if we apply it in this era in particular, when every Muslim is needed to work and work hard. A capable, able woman-- We need her. We need her to go about and struggle hard. How can she do that? If I have been well covered, if my face is so much covered as they want it, how would I be teaching in the university and getting to affect my students? Should have I been so capable to run about and struggle for all the good I am doing now? It would be a hindrance. It would be a hindrance. A hindrance-- good doesn't, I think, want that.

[00:17:48.86] [SPEAKING FRENCH]

[00:18:23.59] I must say that I wasn't happy at the beginning when I saw this and I thought this was really a setback to all the woman's movement in Egypt, especially those that were covering their faces too. Then, I discovered that there were two kinds, I suppose, of movements there, one which probably was imported from some other movement abroad because of the communication between Muslim countries. And such people really represented a sect which had different traditions from our national traditions and were really getting themselves sometimes involved in politics, and something that the nation as a whole wouldn't accept. And they have been discovered now.

[00:19:18.40] The tendency to wear a new kind of long dress with the head cover and all that I discovered to be like a return to something that was native. We never had a national dress. And this was something to express their loyalty to religion. It might express, also, their maybe protest against Westernization, which did not really bring the desired results which they should have been brought in development and all that-- maybe a kind of protest.

[00:19:52.82] But I didn't see that this had affected the image of women as such, because they were still going to universities. They were still walking on the streets and talking to the men and engaging in all kinds of activities. So I took it to be just their freedom to wear what they wanted. We have the hippies wearing what they wanted. And maybe it's a fad.

[00:20:15.94] And it also has an economic value. They don't have to change dresses and go after the fashions. It is costly. They don't have to compete. And it's a simple way of wearing a kind of a national dress, which has also a sort of legitimization in religion. In this sense, I didn't think it was a setback as such.

[00:20:41.02] On the campus of Cairo University, long a center of dissent and political protest, the controversy is not yet over. Here, some of the most fervent supporters of the strictest religious position are to be found. For many students, confronted daily by the different expressions of the movement, whether or not to wear modest dress has become a difficult personal dilemma.

[00:21:07.19] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:22:45.21] But dress can be important in a nation's history. It had been used as a symbol in revolutions all over the world, from Algeria to Iran.

[00:22:55.92] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:23:49.19] [CALL TO PRAYER IN THE DISTANCE]

[00:23:58.33] Since the time of the prophet, devout Muslim women like Nabila have fulfilled their duty to pray at home, far from the center of religious power, the mosque. But today, a quiet revolution is under way. Nabila's religious conviction is taking her and other educated women out of the home and into the mosque. For the first time, women's study groups are meeting regularly in mosques all over Cairo.

[00:24:42.79] Politics and religion, church and state, have never been separated in Egypt. And family law is based on the Koran.

[00:24:50.68] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:25:18.07] It has always been men who have studied and interpreted these Koranic laws that govern women's lives-- marriage, divorce, and child custody. Now, women are exploring for themselves the sources of their faith and law. To understand the law is perhaps the first step towards reinterpreting it.

[00:25:40.59] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:25:45.74] For the last 60 years, Egyptian women have struggled for their rights in the same way as Western women. Today, many are seeking new paths to freedom, within the framework of their own Islamic traditions.

[00:26:00.62] [SPEAKING ARABIC]

[00:26:10.88] [CHANTING]