When Safwat al-Sharif was Information Minister, the presenter of Youm Seidi [A day from Upper Egypt] program on Channel Seven presented the series wearing a galabeya for some three hours. In fact, this was a pleasant surprise and the program received a barrage of phone calls of admiration and encouragement. When Fayda Kamel was an MP, the People's Assembly faced the strangest crisis in its history. The 45-day crisis erupted when three "galabeya-wearing MPs" were chosen by lot to join the delegation of the Committee on Culture and Information which would visit Germany at the invitation of the German Parliament.
The committee's members objected under the pretext that the galabeya-wearing MPs would tarnish Egypt's image abroad. The People's Assembly Speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour feared to exclude the "galabeya -wearing MPs". He had to postpone the travel of the delegation for 45 days. After that, he reached a solution satisfying all parties. He allowed MP Hassan Behalo to travel as a representative of all galabeya-wearing MPs. Behalo, though, insisted to travel wearing galabeya. Strangely enough, MP Mustafa el-Guindi, who always wears silk ties, has put forward a bill calling for considering galabeya as officials' national uniform on national occasions. The MP, who has never been seen wearing galabeya in the People's Assembly or a TV program, also calls for wearing galabeya at the opera!
A national uniform does not necessarily mean a galabeya, otherwise blue galabeyas would have been the national uniform during the days of al-Wafd party's tide before the 1952 Revolution. We call on al-Guindi to tell us what kind and color these galabeyas are, as there are different ones. Many people used to wear white galabeyas during Friday's congregational prayers. In fact, al-Guindi's bill gives the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Group a golden chance to force the Egyptians to wear their galabeyas!
On the Montaha al-Hadith website, the MB members wonder whether it is possible to wear black galabeyas not only at funerals. The website's sheikh answers: it is better to wear white galabeyas, but black ones are not banned, as the Prophet was wearing a black turban during the Conquest of Mecca. In accordance with el-Guindi's bill, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit should sign a contract with Parisian fashion houses to design a national galabeya (preferably white) for diplomatic occasions. Every official would wear a specific galabeya suiting his rank. The galabeya of a ministry first undersecretary would inevitably be different from that of a director general, while employees' galabeyas would change according to the employee's level.
