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Translation - English Niqab-wearing Morsi supporter: the aim is the mosque, the beard, and the niqab
Mohamed Hussein - Faiyum
“The issue is no longer whether to expel or retain Morsi...the issue has now become the return of the military yet again, and its attempt to take control of the state by filling the political void. The issue is hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth being thrown back into prisons at the hands of the once defunct state security apparatus.” These were the words of a niqab-wearing woman as she explained her growing fears on the night of July 30: the return of the police state, and with it, the widespread arrests of Islamists then demonstrating at Faiyum’s al-Masala Square.
Miriam Nabil, the wife of a Salafi man, decided that she is participating in her city’s demonstrations to support “legitimacy,” she said, and to keep Dr. Mohamed Morsi in power. Nabil’s discomfort and deep concern center on the prospect of her husband returning to jail, where he spent over six years in Mubarak’s and Adly’s prisons, a punishment she attributes to his beard and strict observance of the five daily prayers at the mosque. This, she says, made him a target for monitoring by the state’s security services.
Islamists are taking to the streets in protest for reasons that go far beyond the demand to keep in place the legitimate president of the country, Nabil added, and are doing so “rather to preserve the Islamic identity of Egypt from the enemies of religion, from liberals, from atheists, and remnants of the former regime.”
“The issue is no longer simply Mohamed Morsi. The issue has become Islam and religious faith itself, and those who wish to erase this religious faith from the hearts of the youth. Those responsible for this crisis won’t be able to get themselves out of it, as we won’t leave the squares to them,” she said, her words evoking a bold insistence. Nabil stressed that women too would be participating in the demonstrations calling for legitimacy and the maintenance of the victories of the January 25 Revolution, an uprising that demanded the expulsion of the Mubarak regime and its henchmen.
Nabil said she hoped her message would reach all those who recognize “coups against the will of the people and against legitimacy,” declaring, “to all those who allow themselves to be seduced into living with coups, this is your fate. Are you prepared to bear humiliation and servitude, and

the return of oppression and corruption? Are you ready to bear oppression from men of the Mubarak regime and the corrupt individuals of the state security apparatus, which are now suddenly reemerging from near and far? It’s up to you to watch our fate and judge if you will stay in your house waiting for the unknown, or see the truth and wake up to defend your dignity and honor.
As for the other reasons that led Nabil to support the Morsi regime, she said that even if there were mistakes made, the regime faced challenges from both inside and outside throughout the past year, challenges which obstructed the regime’s ability to work and restore the country, and that “Morsi was a bearded, Muslim man, who prayed, feared god and was loyal to his wife, children and entire country.”
Nabil continued by recounting a time when “in the middle of the night I found some people waking me up, and waking up my husband and children, and arresting my husband from our midst. We didn’t learn a single thing about him, where he went or when he was returning.” It is these memories that motivate Nabil’s participation in demonstrations supporting former president Morsi. She fears a return of the oppressive police state and widespread detainments. She describes the prior year as a time when the youth were flourishing, and people did not “fear praying in the mosques during the era of Dr. Mohamed Morsi.”
Concluding her thoughts, Nabil noted that “those carrying the banner of June 30 and the coup on legitimacy are the same people who yesterday were praising and glorifying Mubarak and his entourage. They were unable to compete in the political process and the elections so they resorted to bullets and Molotov cocktails. The conflict right now is aimed at Egypt’s Islamic identity and the target is the mosque, the beard, and the niqab. But just as they lost each conflict before, they will lose this conflict as well, god willing.”
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