A senior official at Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest Sunni Islamic institution, on Monday took a swipe at a recent call for Muslim women to take off their veil, stressing that the head cover is a religious must for female Muslims once they reach puberty.

‎Abbas Shouman, deputy to Egypt's Grand Imam, made the comments, after writer Cherif Choubachy recently called on his Facebook page for veiled women to take off their headscarves at a rally he proposed to be held in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in early May.

Choubachy argues that the headscarf, which is common in Muslim countries, re-appeared in Egypt in the early 1970s after it had all but disappeared for 50 years, following rhetoric at the time that Egypt had lost the 1967 war against Israel because people had strayed from Islamic teachings.

“It’s unacceptable for anyone to ask a woman to quit praying, fasting,” or any other Islamic tenet, Shouman said, calling Choubachy's comments "an encroachment on women's freedoms".
Source: Ahram Online