{"id":8281,"date":"2019-12-05T07:53:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T12:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8281"},"modified":"2020-01-15T08:33:19","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T13:33:19","slug":"egypt-adventure-muslim-dress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8281","title":{"rendered":"Egypt Adventure: Muslim Dress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Egypt,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What to wear? Inevitably, some\nAmerican tourists did not get the message that conservative dress is preferred\nin Egypt\u2014no shorts, no tank tops, no short skirts, no excessive display of skin.\nWhile this standard is pretty much adhered to in Cairo and, certainly, in\nmosques throughout the country (where you are expected to show the skin on your\nfeet), near the monuments in the blazing desert sun, Bermuda-length shorts are\nmore the rule, especially for men tourists. Many women wore capri pants. Jeans,\nwhich tend to be too form-fitting, were rare among women tourists. (I should\nadd that most visitors, on our tour and others, were \u201cof a certain age.\u201d) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I wouldn\u2019t have\nexpected it, my shirts with three-quarter, loose-fitting sleeves were just as\ncomfortable as short sleeves, because they protected my arms from the sun. I\ngot a last wearing out of my somewhat battered hat from Hawai`i with the wide\nbrim. Women tourists were never expected to cover our hair, although most of us\nhad scarves or shawls that could have served that purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about the Egyptians? In\nCairo, the men generally wear Western dress. The women wear long sleeves, long\npants or skirts, and cover their hair with the hijab, usually a colorful one.\nOccasionally you see a Cairo woman wearing the enveloping abaya<\/em> (almost\nalways in black; it looks suffocating) and wears the veil. The farther south\nyou travel, the more women are so attired. Wearing the faceveil (the niqab) is\nseen by many as a political act in support of Islamism, not a religious duty, and\nthe country\u2019s leadership has tried to\ndiscourage it<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the south, many men wear the\nlong garment called the gellabiya<\/em>. Most often, as I remember it, the\ngellabiya is gray, as it is in the photo of workmen at a construction site\noutside the Temple of Dendera. As every woman knows, a skirt is often cooler\nthan slacks, because its movement creates a little breeze\u2014automatic air\nconditioning. Many southern men wear a small turban. These keep the sun from\nbeating down directly on their heads and are common among farmers in their\nfields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our tour guide told us that in much of the 20th<\/sup> century, Egyptian women did not<\/em> cover their hair. But in the 1970s, when satellite television came to Egypt, there were many broadcasts by imams of Saudi Arabia\u2019s conservative Wahhabi sect, who claimed that to be a \u201cgood Muslim\u201d and go to heaven, women should cover. Eventually, our guide said, the authorities stopped these broadcasts, but the seed was sown. With about a third of Egypt\u2019s population being Coptic Christian, you wouldn\u2019t expect that headscarf-wearing would appear so near-universal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egypt Adventure: The Nile<\/a>
Egypt Adventure: Security<\/a>
Egypt Adventure: Cairo’s Ancient Sights\/Sites<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Vicki Weisfeld <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What to wear? Inevitably, some American tourists did not get the message that conservative dress is preferred in Egypt\u2014no shorts, no tank tops, no short skirts, no excessive display of skin. While this standard is pretty much adhered to in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Egypt Adventure: Muslim Dress - what tourists should\/do wear and how Egyptians dress. Controversies over the headscarf are prevalent there too.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1288,266,104,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-the-morgue","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/P1000155_Moment-2.jpg?fit=955%2C1068&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-29z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8309,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8281\/revisions\/8309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}