Cairo University banned students from wearing the niqab when sitting for mid-term exams that started Sunday.
To prevent cheating, the administration gave instructions that all students must show their faces during the exams.
The students have filed a lawsuit, requesting the Administrative Court to overrule the decision. The court will examine the case on Wednesday.
Cairo University spokesman Sami Abdel Aziz said the university's president Hossam Kamel had challenged a previous court ruling which sentenced him in absentia to three months in prison for declining to carry out an earlier Administrative Court ruling which ordered him to rescind a previous decision that banned faculty members from giving lectures while wearing the niqab.
“With no disrespect for the law, we have the right to identify the students,” Abdel Aziz said.
Al-Azhar University and its affiliated institutes, meanwhile, allowed niqab-wearing students to sit mid-term exams. “We have employed female supervisors to identify the students as they come into the exam rooms,” said Al-Azhar undersecretary Mohamed Abdel Aziz. “Once they are inside the rooms, they may wear the veil again.”
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
