CAIRO: Fayoum University's administration has upheld a legal ruling giving a group of female students wearing the niqab, or full-face veil, the right to re-sit examinations. The university's president was reportedly served with an official warning ordering him to implement the ruling. In January the university cancelled examinations in the psychology and sociology departments that final year students at the Faculty of Education were due to sit. NGO the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) condemned the decision, describing it in a statement issued last month as a “punishment of female students for their beliefs.” EIPR last month issued a formal warning to the university president demanding that the ruling be implemented. EIPR lawyer Hoda Nasrallah said in a statement issued on Thursday that, “Fayoum University's president should have complied with the ruling immediately without delay,” and without being served an official warning. “The fact that the university president reversed his position and implemented the legal ruling in favor of the female students is not an act of kindness by the university but rather a correction of a mistake and implementation of a legal ruling,” Nasrallah says. EIPR says in its statement that this development “will put an end to discriminatory and punitive practices taken by universities against students wearing the niqab which contravene the personal liberty and freedom of belief guaranteed by the constitution.”
