Cairo: In what is being seen as a backlash against the hijab, nightclubs in Cairo are refusing to allow hijab-wearing women in.
Yasmine al-Mehairy did not even want to be there. She had been invited to a friend’s birthday party at an upmarket nightclub in the Four Seasons hotel. But when the bouncer pointed at her headscarf as the reason she could not enter, al-Mehairy decided to fight.
“I ended up arguing with the guy for longer than I would have stayed in the first place if he just let me in,” said the 29-year-old IT professional.
In trendy clubs and cafés across Cairo the hijab is increasingly being shunned as unacceptable dress. Several bars and restaurants where alcohol is served now essentially ban veiled women from entering. The policy is more open in some places than others but seems to apply to at least half a dozen Cairo venues.
“They always give you the ‘there’s going to be alcohol’ reason,” said a Western-raised veiled Arab woman who has lived in Cairo since 2006. “In Egypt it’s mostly that they don’t like the look of it. They want to maintain some sort of prestige,” the woman, told The Times.
One manager of a Cairo club, however, said that the restrictions were less about protecting the veiled women from “sinful” environments than about shielding the club’s core clients from having to look at veiled women. “It causes a lot of discomfort and doesn’t create the atmosphere I need to make money,” the manager said. “I can either make my regulars comfortable or I make the other 1 per cent comfortable.”
A prominent segment of the population feels alarmed and besieged by the trend, and is willing to accept—and even embrace—the kind of steps that would prompt an immediate discrimination lawsuit and cries of “Islamophobia” if they were attempted in the US or Europe.
“Our relationship with religion has become so schizophrenic,” said Ethar al-Katatney, a young veiled journalist. “We want to be like the West and the hijab is regarded as a throwback. The people who go to these places are a certain segment of society. In this segment the hijab is considered tacky.” AGENCIES
, pella ohna nu fatva jari karna paina si ke club, dance, sharab to bacho. Hun club waleya ne ohna da kamm easy kar ta 
