CAIRO — On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.
Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented.
For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.
One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of “We don’t want Ferial here,” the teenager said.
Habib was allowed last week to attend without the scarf, and civil rights advocates say her case is a rare one. But it stokes the fears of Egypt’s significant Christian minority that they will become the victims as Islamists grow more assertive after the Feb. 11 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.
It also illustrates how amid the country’s political turmoil, with little sense of who is in charge and government control weakened, Islamic conservatives in low-level posts can step in and try to unilaterally enforce their own decisions.
Wagdi Halfa, one of Habib’s lawyers, said the root problem is a lack of the rule of law.
“We don’t want more laws, but we want to activate the laws already in place,” he said. “We are in a dark tunnel in terms of sectarian tension. Even if you have the majority who are moderate Muslims, a minority of extremists can make big impact on them and poison their minds.”
In the past weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angered by church construction. One riot broke out near the city of Aswan, even after church officials agreed to a demand by local ultraconservative Muslims, called Salafis, that a cross and bells be removed from the building.
The violence is particularly frustrating for Christians because soon after Mubarak’s fall, the new government promised to review and lift heavy Mubarak-era restrictions on building or renovating churches. But the review never came, and Salafi clerics have increased their rhetoric against Christians.
Egypt’s Christians, who make up at least 10 percent of the population of 80 million, have enjoyed relative freedom in terms of dress and worship. The vast majority of Muslim women in Egypt put on the headscarf, known as the hijab, either for religious or social reasons, but there’s little expectation that Christians wear it.
The demand at Habib’s school that all students wear the hijab was a decision by administrators and teachers at the high school in Sheik Fadl, 110 miles south of Cairo in Minya province. They said the headscarf was part of the school uniform, necessary to protect girls from sexual harassment.
“I am happy I did what I want and that no one can force something on me. But I am afraid of the students and the teachers,” she told The Associated Press. “The teachers are not normal with me, and I am sure they will give me low grades at the end of the year.”
Numbers
80 million Population of Egypt
10 percent Proportion of Egypt’s population that is Christian
