Niqab makes a comeback in Syrian universities and beyond

The Full Black Veil (Niqab) Revives in Syria’s Universities — and Beyond

Against the natural world, the black veil that entirely covers a woman including her eyes, had been abolished from Syrian universities in July 2010. Under the new Islamist regime of Ahmed al-Sharaa it announces itself back with vigour.

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Female graduates are invisible in niqab – in a video circulating online of a graduation ceremony from Hama University’s Arts and Humanities Faculty, July 20026.

In 2010, teaching staff and students were barred by the Assad government from wearing the niqab at universities as it was thought to undermine the secular identity of the country. The outlawed variant had still showed the eyes. 1

Under the new Syrian (Islamist) regime of former Al Qaeda Emir and Jabhat al-Nusra chief, Ahmet al-Sharaa, the niqab’s resurgence has reached back into Syrian universities but even the eyes are concealed.

Scenes from recent graduation ceremonies show female conservatives wearing the traditional graduation headboard but with a full-face veil that even covers the eyes. Most of those endorsing this costume also go to the extreme of donning black gloves. No flesh is exposed to the light of day.

Female graduates pose together with a complete absence of all personal identity: their identity is that of the community of Believers and a homogenous identity.

The trend towards increasing female covering had first been enforced under al-Sharaa’s leadership when he controlled Idlib before seizing the capital with the help of CIA funding in December 2024. 2

What is the reason behind the push to adopt the Sharia dress code? ‘Modesty’ – according to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam as regurgitated by hardline preacher, the Egyptian extremist, Hani Dahab, AKA Sheikh al-Dhanabi.

The Egyptian preacher joined the ‘jihad’ in Syria in 2012. Al Jumhuriya claimed he signed up with al-Sharaa’s Al Nusra Front after an initial affiliation with ISIS and became operational on the coast under the nom de guerre of Sheikh al-Dhahabi.

Injured in 2015, he enjoyed medical treatment in Turkey like other jihadists that took advantage of the porous Syrian-Turkish border with official Turkish help in this period.4 See also: Hiding in Plain Sight: Turkey’s ISIS links, Al Baghdadi’s Last Refuge and the Jihadist-controlled ‘Safe Zone.’

Since regime change in December 2024, Sheikh al-Dhahabi has posted openly under his revealed name of Hani Daab, with his activities focused on the push for Sharia clothing proselytizing in Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Eastern Ghouta, al-Mazzah district in Damascus, Hasaka, Deir ez-Zour and Latakia.5

Hani Daab has also been spearheading the Sharia dress code campaign in public spaces and institutions including hospitals and universities. He distributes niqabs openly while seeking cash donations to further perpetuate his message.

Forcing girls to wear Islamic Abaya was a practice firmly installed in Idlib under al-Sharaa’s group. Even displaced women trying to flee into Turkey were forced to wear it just to transit Idlib. Likewise, women returning to visit family member still living or sheltering in Idlib were compelled to cover themselves up or face abuses, including imprisonment.

As background to the present campaign, it is worth recalling a 2017 feature article published in Enab Baladi that noted at the time: “Coercion and imposition of a certain dressing code differ from one province to another according to the Faction which controls the village or city. According to Enab Baladi’s reporter in Idlib, Women Advocacy Office was established by Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly al-Nusra front, which makes its activity concentrated in the faction’s deployment areas…”6

Ahmet al-Sharaa may pretend to his Western backers that his Wahhabist-Salafist gaols and ideology7are behind him but in practice his association with proponents of extreme religious conservatism speak otherwise. Short courses in Islamic theory and law are now conflated with full secular, academic degrees. Male and female students are likely to become increasingly segregated on campus. Extremist students are also refusing to change their niqabs for regular dress, openly advocating its spread. It is symbolic of the attitudes that give rise to its acceptance.

Once banned

Banned in 2010 by the previous Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad the niqab is back and it is being touted as desirable. This stance does not appear in isolation from the ideology that inspires it.

Despite a highly complex transnational and internecine conflict raging across Syria from March 2011 to March 2025, spanning almost 14 years and leaving more than 656,493 dead, some 200, 000 of them civilians 8 much of the fighting revolved upon turf wars between rival Islamic militias – it was not just a war between opposition forces and the state.

This became abundantly clear at the time of the staged chemical weapons incidents through the involvement of foreign groups who were focused on regime change in the guise of civil defence, or aid and emergency care like the White Helmets. The latter took shelter with Al Nusra and other militias in order to operate in jihadist-held areas.9

Differing little, if at all in terms of ideology, the rival Islamist militias claimed to be fighting for jihad in Syria (often overlapping inside Iraq) and to be guiding believers on the ‘true’ path.

Idlibisation

In Idlib when the city was governed by Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its ‘Salvation Government’ women accused of adultery and/or prostitution being stoned to death in the street were shown in videos disseminated online.

Hundreds of people that opposed Al-Nusra/HTS and the Salvation Government were kidnapped, imprisoned, abused, tortured and killed. 10 No price has been paid at leadership level for these crimes nor for the massacres of minorities since.

In a 2022 report released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on the most notable Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) violations from the establishment of Jabhat al Nusra to 2022 it “reveals that Hay’at Tahrir al Sham continues to commit multiple types of human rights violations, mainly in its detention centers. The report documents the deaths of at least 505 civilians at the hands of HTS, including 71 children, 77 women, and 28 deaths due to torture, in addition to at least 2,327 individuals who are still arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared by HTS…”11

ISIS declared Al Sharaa an apostate

ISIS accuses al-Sharaa of not being sufficiently true to the Islamic path, particularly in his having engaged in bilateral talks with the Americans, the European leaders and on again, off again, with Netanyahu’s Israel despite the latter’s ongoing occupation of border areas between the two countries. 12

That critique aside, Daesh’s means to achieving its goals and the goals themselves (of a functioning Islamic State governed by Sharia law) differ very little from those of their former ally turned foe.

Women’s subservience

The niqab is constructed to envelop women in a physical and ideological constraint that projects the role of the female as subservient to the male. The ideology is widely propounded in the Salafist schools in Saudi and Yemen that declare that a man unrelated to a woman must neither see nor touch any part of her. Many transnationals that undertook jihad in Syria studied at the Sharia schools in Yemen.13

Ahmed al Sharaa will not abolish the niqab. His wife, Latifa al-Droubi, does not cover her face but it is likely that she may temporarily have had to do so when her husband was still an Emir with Al Qaeda and deployed to lead Al Nusra. He recalled of their earlier years spent together in the mountains how Latifa “lived with me in 49 different homes and followed me from caves to shelters, even chicken coops,” said al-Sharaa …”14 They had married a year into the war in 2012. Al Nusra was declared a branch of Al Qaeda in Syria in January 2012.

Latifa al-Droubi now walks the same path as Emine Erdogan, the wife of Turkish Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both ‘first ladies’ appear in public fully ensconced in hijab. Latifa was shown graduating from the Faculty of Arts & Humanities of Idlib University wearing a black hijab and mortar board in 2025. She was a student from the so-called “Victory and Liberation Class of 2025.”

Tik Tok Extremism

Extolling extremist Islamic values in the 21st century can be seen as a rather hypocritical practice: those who do so will also generally showcase that they use the latest smart phones, own flash cars and wear designer trainers.

Numerous women donning the burka, hijab, or niqab pose on Tik Tok in provocative guises; some reveal flirting eyes enlarged with false eyelashes and black kohl, others show off their Botox-plumped lips pouting in pseudo-sexy display yet carefully covering their hair willing to attract conservative Muslim males despite the territorial possessiveness and ultimate controls this would subject them to after marriage.

Warnings of internal conflict

The niqab-displaying ‘graduates’ in Syrian universities are emerging in under two years into Al Sharaa’s rule. They should serve as a warning that worse is. likely to come.

Women played a very significant role across the wider Syrian opposition movement hoping to bring greater freedoms to Syria and across the region. Syrian Kurdish women that courageously joined the ranks of all female fighters in the JPG to combat ISIS became a real phenomenon.

Faced with ‘integration’ into the new Syrian forces that includes many extremist elements who proudly killed, mutilated, raped and abused several of their fighters during bitter battles at the beginning of the year, as highlighted in Aleppo, their future looks difficult.

In a video circulating on social media since Saturday, a fighter on the second floor of a damaged building is seen throwing a female fighter’s body into the street while soldiers nearby shout “Allahu akbar”, or God is the greatest…Some are heard insulting the dead woman, whom the Kurds identified as a member of their internal security forces, saying the incident took place in Sheikh Maqsoud.16 The Syrian Islamists in the New Syrian Army forces insulted the women as pigs and infidels in language reminiscent of Al Nusra and of ISIS in dehumanising the enemy.17

Imrali’s role

Imprisoned Kurdish leader, Abdullah Öcalan’s vision of so-called ‘democratic societies’ shunning ethnic nationalism remains essentially socialist and secular. Congratulations on Al Sharaa’s victory were left to Mazlum Abdi, commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces that encompassed the YPG and YPJ Kurdish fighters (along with some Arab units).

However, Öcalan’s idealism hatched in custody on Imrali Island sits badly with the centrist pan-Islamic vision of Ahmet al-Sharaa and his HTS-based cabinet. For decades the PKK had been sheltered by Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, in Damascus as a card against Turkey. Öcalan headed the training schools there for twenty years. He warned in a public statement dubbed as protocols for the resolution of the Kurdish issue in Turkey (highly complementary to the Turkish foe), “If democratic conditions are not created, it is not inconceivable that Ahmed al‑Sharaa could also take on dictatorial traits in the future.”18

Öcalan said nothing in this long, anecdotal spiel about the Islamisation of Syrian women despite having always expressed admiration for women’s role in his ‘democratic society’ project.

YPJ cadres are taught to embrace and expound Öcalan’s ‘philosopy’ during and after their training, just as are their male counterparts in the YPG and Revolutionary Youth.

Recruitment is continuing into these forces even as four brigades from the umbrella SDF sign up to ‘integrate’ into the Syrian Army – the same armed forces that view them as ‘pigs’ and as the enemy of Islam.19 Some derive from the very same ISIS groups that the SDF battled with so fatally to keep out of Rojava. They have been seen desecrating fallen Kurdish fighters’ graves. They particularly revile ‘liberated’ women.

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/world/middleeast/20briefs-SYRIA.html
2 https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2017/09/syrians-clothing-following-whose-religion/
3 https://www.instagram.com/p/DZwbZ2oMcRU/
4 https://www.lejdd.fr/International/Les-mysterieux-fichiers-de-Daech-776969-3157277
5 https://syrianobserver.com/society/meet-the-egyptian-jihadist-leading-a-niqab-promotion-campaign-inside-syrian-universities.html
6 https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2017/09/syrians-clothing-following-whose-religion/
7 https://www.ide.go.jp/library/Japanese/Publish/Reports/Seisaku/pdf/201307_mide_08.pdf
8 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/syrian-war-human-toll-deaths-disappearances-mass-graves-displacement/
9 https://archive.sana.sy/en/?p=145238
10 https://snhr.org/blog/2022/01/31/57274/
11 Ibid.
12 https://thenewregion.com/posts/4652
13 https://newlinesinstitute.org/middle-east-center/isis-in-yemen-caught-in-a-regional-power-game-2/
14 https://www.wionews.com/world/who-is-latifa-al-droubi-syrian-leader-ahmed-al-sharaa-s-wife-what-you-should-know-1749451731147
15 https://thearabweekly.com/syrias-first-lady-makes-public-appearance-raising-questions-about-future-role
16 https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-rights-groups-urge-probe-video-apparent-abuses-aleppo
17 https://www.facebook.com/reel/754293664406100
18 https://ocalanvigil.net/2026/01/ocalan-without-democracy-in-syria-al-sharaa-will-also-become-a-dictator/
19 https://ikurd.net/debunked-pkk-leader-ocalan-2026-07-01

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

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