Al-Azhar deputy rejects call for women to remove their headscarves
Ahram Online , Monday 13 Apr 2015
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/127564/Egypt/Politics-/AlAzhar-deputy-rejects-call-for-women-to-remove-th.aspx

A senior official at Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest Sunni Islamic
institution, on Monday took a swipe at a recent call for Muslim women to
take off their veil, stressing that the head cover is a religious must for
female Muslims once they reach puberty.

‎Abbas Shouman, deputy to Egypt's Grand Imam, made the comments, after
writer Cherif Choubachy recently called on his Facebook page for veiled
women to take off their headscarves at a rally he proposed to be held in
Cairo’s Tahrir Square in early May.

Choubachy argues that the headscarf, which is common in Muslim countries,
re-appeared in Egypt in the early 1970s after it had all but disappeared for
50 years, following rhetoric at the time that Egypt had lost the 1967 war
against Israel because people had strayed from Islamic teachings.

“It’s unacceptable for anyone to ask a woman to quit praying, fasting,” or
any other Islamic tenet, Shouman said, calling Choubachy's comments "an
encroachment on women's freedoms".