Female supporters of Salafi presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail have not abstained from sleeping inside tents erected in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the sheikh's supporters have sat since Saturday to protest his exclusion from the race.
A Salafi sit-in, the women explained, differs from the usual female protests to the extent that it makes the Sharia view of women demonstrating totally different.
Some religious conservatives have previously denounced women's participation in protests at Tahrir.
Protester Alaa Ahmed said she believes taking part in the sit-in with a mahram — the Islamic term for a woman's husband, father, son or brother — and under the guardianship of pious men makes the protest more Sharia-compliant than other protests, where she says women spend the night alone inside their tents.
In traditional Islamic thought, the presence of mahram is one necessary condition for Muslim women to travel.
"See the news photos and compare us with other protesters," Ahmed argues. "We go with our men and we sleep under their protection. It is different from what the revolution's female protesters used to do and from the scenes we used to see then."
At the sit-in, some Salafi women prefer to sleep without taking off their niqabs for their own safety.
"A woman with a niqab sleeps as she is," Ahmed says.
The women believe that taking to the square and participating in the sit-in is an exception imposed by necessity. Though admitting that women's participation in protests might be at odds with the Quranic verse that requires women to stay at home, the pro-Abu Ismail women say their attendance is necessary to protect the country.
"We are different from other unscrupulous protesters who appeared in the revolution. We act according to our Islamic doctrine, we do not behave chaotically, we follow the words of trusted scholars, and our men are accompanying us. So there is no problem," says Om Belal, who wears a full Islamic garment bearing an Abu Ismail poster, along with other revolutionary phrases.
The role of the mahram does not end by sunrise. They encircle the women during protest marches and sometimes take to the podiums to give the women instructions on how to deal with other protesters.
"Do not speak with anybody, and if they talk to you, say you will not respond out of respect for Sharia," was one of the directives, which the women applied immediately upon hearing and stopped talking to reporters on hand.
The Presidential Elections Commission excluded Abu Ismail from the race earlier this month, saying documents show his mother held American citizenship.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
