More and more Egyptian stars take the veil

Yomna Kamel and Sara Mashhour

Abeer Sabry’s beauty and style of acting captured the hearts of her audience when she co-starred in last year’s Ramadan television series Hawanem Garden City. Then earlier this year, the promising young actress suddenly decided to desert her fame and wealth, take on the veil and devote her life to serving Islam.

"I have been reading religious books and deeply thinking about my life," said a veiled and conservatively dressed Sabry to Ala Waraq (On Paper) host Mahmoud Saad on the Dream TV program. She made the life-changing decision while co-starring in one of the most successful comic plays of the summer, Do Re Mi Fasouliya (Do Re Me, Beans) with Samir Ghanem and Shaaban Abdel Raheem. "I had this feeling that life is too short. Now I am on the path to either good or bad and I told myself I want the good and I’ll have to work to get it."

This radical lifestyle change hasn’t been as much a shock to her fans as it could have been since many other young, talented and beautiful actresses have recently done the same. One thing they all have in common: they attended religious lessons given by popular young Egyptian Sheikh Amr Khaled or Yemeni Sheikh Al Habib Bin Ali.

"Listening to a religious lesson given by Al Habib Bin Ali and then being invited by some friends to attend a religious lesson given by a retired actress was the turning point in my life," said Sabry on the program. "Immediately after the lesson, I decided to wear the Islamic dress and asked my friends to bring me one. I went home wearing the veil and the Islamic dress and I was extremely happy and satisfied," she said.

For Ghada Adel, a former actress known for her role in the hit 1998 film Saidi Fi Al Gamaa Al Amrikiya (An Upper Egyptian at AUC), attending Amr Khaled’s lessons brought change to her life. Though Adel’s husband, film producer Magdi Al Hawari, is totally against her decision, she says she will never return to acting and she is happy and convinced of what she has done.

Mona Liza, a young actress who starred in another Heneidi film Hammam Fi Amsterdam (Hammam in Amsterdam) followed in Adel’s steps and quit acting. She explained that she decided to wear the veil after she had a strange incident on the beach when she was listening to some music. Suddenly, the music stopped and seconds later she heard Quranic recitation. A few weeks after the incident, Mona Liza went to Mecca for the omra (off-season pilgrimage) and this, she says, is where she found herself, decided to wear the veil and give up acting.

Mona Abdel Ghani, another retired singer and actress who preceded Sabry, Adel and Mona Liza in getting veiled, participated in recent concerts and fundraising campaigns to aid the Palestinians. She performed wearing the veil, reminding people of the retired veteran singer, Yasmine Al Khayyam who took the veil in a previous wave.

"I decided to put on the veil when my brother died in Paris," Abdel Ghani said. Her brother was a bit conservative and always wanted her to quit singing and get veiled. When he died she began thinking it could have been her and fulfilled her brother’s wish. Marital problems ensued because her husband, a musician, did not want her to give up singing and acting.

Abdel Ghani is still chased by production companies trying to persuade her to change her mind. But the singer is adamant. She recently refused LE750,000 to record a new album and said she would never take back her decision to retire from the music business, but she does not mind singing for the sake of the poor or for any other good cause like building the children’s cancer hospital, or singing for the Palestinians.

Besides learning and teaching the Quran, she started a television program called Mona wa Ikhwataha (Mona and her Sisters) about the role of the Muslim woman towards her kids, her husband, society and herself. It will be televised on Iqraa, the religious education channel on the ART satellite network, and perhaps on Dream TV.

"We call it the bandwagon syndrome when one after another of the same group adopts the same behavior or change," said Madiha Al Safty, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo. "I see this happening at the present time and it happened years before," Al Safty said.

The phenomenon is reminiscent of a similar religious wave that hit Egyptian actresses in the 1970s when Shams Al Baroudi and her husband Hassan Youssef quit acting. and then in the 1980s when actress Hana Tharwat, popular belly dancers Zizi Moustafa, Hala Al Safi and Sahar Hamdi all took the same path.

After wearing the veil and covering their faces, Al Baroudi and Tharwat never made any more public appearances and both actresses have stayed out of the public spotlight, dedicating their time to teaching women about Islam.

What distinguishes the new generation of veiling actresses is their willingness to continue appearing in public acting and singing, though now for a good cause, to serve Islam and to present a moderate Islamic perspective.

The new generation of young actresses, Al Safty explains, often come under the influence of a young sheikh who is modern and good-looking. They feel he is one of them and hence listen carefully to his lessons.

While it was aged Sheikh Muhammad Metwalli Shaarawi who influenced actresses in the 1970s and 1980s, this time around it’s the young and photogenic sheikhs like Al Habib Bin Ali and Amr Khaled that are bringing girls to cover their heads, explained Saad of Dream TV, who is also editor-in-chief of entertainment magazine Al Kawakeb.

"These sheikhs are good communicators and are gifted with glamour and influence over others. They remind me of [famous actor] Ahmad Zaki’s influence and attraction," Saad said.

Young actresses, however, do not necessarily have deep religious culture or education and are therefore more vulnerable to religious influence especially when topics like death, torture, and hell are brought up, explained Saad. Some sheikhs use these alarming words to frighten the young actresses and push them to abandon acting while other sheikhs like Bin Ali captivate them by narrating moving stories from Islamic heritage, he said.

In addition, some of the new sheikhs present moderate views of Islam that encourage the young to be more religious. Khaled, for instance, told young actor Ahmad Al Fishawi, the son of famous veteran actor, Farouq Al Fishawi, not to quit acting, but to be more careful in selecting the kind of work he wants to present.

"Personally, I do not find actresses wearing the veil wrong or badly affecting their acting career," said Saad. "It is their right to put on the veil, as it is also the right of actress Youssra to wear whatever she wants. But they would be mistaken if they claim that acting is haram [forbidden by Islam]," he said.

Saad does not believe the rumors that say some countries or extreme groups pay the Egyptian actresses to quit acting. Having some retired actresses returning to acting simply because they do not have any other source of income to support them and their families is clear evidence against these rumors. Sawsan Badr, Farida Seif Al Nasr, Afaf Shoaib, and Zizi Moustafa are examples of actresses who returned to their profession after veiling, he said.

The phenomenon isn’t limited to the glitz and glamour crowd, regular young girls are also taking the veil. At a press conference at the Rabat International Film Festival, actress Leila Elwi confirmed that taking on the veil has spread from actresses to the rest of Egyptian society.

Heba Reda, a university student, decided to put on the veil after listening to some religious lessons given by Amr Khaled and Al Habib Bin Ali. "A veiled friend talked to me about the value of wearing the veil and gave me tapes of Amr Khaled and Al Habib Bin Ali. It took me few days to make up my mind and take the decision of wearing the veil," Reda said.

In Reda’s circle of friends, five out of ten girls put on the veil in the past few months. "I think there is a trend to wear the veil but here at the university we see some girls wearing it some of the time and then change their mind. Other girls who are really faithful and deeply believe in what they are doing, never go back on their decision," Reda said.

Sarah Nedal, another university student, put on the veil last year after losing some of her close friends. "I see young people losing their life and I believe it can happen to anyone anytime regardless of his or her age," she said. "I was not able to sleep well for a week and I felt there was something missing and I found it when I put on the veil."

An issue often stressed by charismatic preachers in their arguments behind veiling has been the possibility of sudden death. While it is difficult to guess the numbers, Saad estimates that at Cairo University, for example, 80 percent of young women are veiled. At AUC, the veiling movement is also growing.