Newsreader on State TV Wears Hijab

Headscarves Allowed on Official TV: According to the New York Times (9/3/12): In what was called a first for Egyptian state television, a woman wearing a head scarf presented headlines in a newscast on Sunday (Sept. 2), breaking with a code of secular dress that for decades effectively barred the wearing of Islamic head coverings." At least three other veiled women will soon be appearing on state television in Channel 1, including a weather presenter, a shift from the standards established when state television was founded five decades ago. Though head scarves were not explicitly banned, in practice they were tolerated only for off-screen employees. Under the secular authoritarians who preceded President Mohamed Morsi state television functioned as a mouthpiece of the government. Is this one step in an effort by Morsi, a former leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to encourage a more Islamic sensibility on Egyptian newscasts and in society.Egypt All-Veiled Channel: In the studios of Cairo's Maria TV, a channel launched on the first day of Ramadan, two presenters dressed in austere black, their faces covered but for narrow eye slits and their hands gloved, discuss the editorial content for the day. The channel named after one of the Prophet Mohammed's wives is run by women and will only feature niqab (a cloth which covers the face)-clad presenters (Egyptian Gazette, 7/26/12).Until the revolution that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak last year (2011) and brought a Muslim Brotherhood president to power, women wearing Islamic headscarves, and particularly full face veils, had been decisively kept out of the media.