An Egyptian preacher's niqab campaign runs into Syria's new government
A campaign distributing niqabs on Damascus University's campus drew a formal warning in June 2026. In August, the same organiser's event at a Damascus mall was blocked outright — officials called the garments "not Syrian".
Most of the notes in this section are about states restricting niqab. This one is different: a Syrian state, still finding its footing after Assad, restricting who gets to promote it.
The organiser
Hani Dahab, an Egyptian national who goes by "al-Dhahabi" ("the Golden"), runs a campaign distributing niqabs and other garments described as "legitimate dress", along with a dawah programme. Coverage of the campaign is not fully consistent on whether it is best described as a niqab campaign or a broader hijab campaign: several Syrian outlets and social accounts specifically named it a niqab-distribution campaign, others described the clothing more generally. What is not in dispute is that niqab specifically was distributed at the university event below.
June 2026 — Damascus University
Videos and photos circulated online showing niqabs distributed at Damascus University's Faculty of Medicine. The university's administration issued a statement rejecting the activity, stating that all activities on campus require prior approval "from the university administration and competent authorities," and warning organisers they faced "legal and administrative accountability." Dahab's campaign countered that it held written authorisation from the university, including a specific restriction on drone photography on campus.
August 2026 — Sham City Center
A second event was planned inside the Sham City Center mall in Damascus, with the mall's own management already having approved it. Samer Bayraqdar, Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) in the interim government, intervened to stop it going ahead.
The stated reason, per the campaign's own account of the exchange, was not security or public order but authenticity: the clothing on offer "is not from the clothes of the people of Sham" and was "foreign to Syria." Dahab disputed this, saying the campaign had tried to explain the historical background of these dress styles in Syria, without success. He then escalated, threatening to publicly name the specific official responsible.
Why the reasoning is worth noting
"Foreign to national dress" is not a novel argument: it is the same framing Tajikistan used in its 2024 law, which describes the garment as foreign to national culture. What makes the Syrian case a sharper instance of it is the organiser's own nationality: this is a foreign preacher's campaign being told, by name, that what he is distributing is not native dress — in a country where the interim government is still establishing what public religious activity it will and will not license, and by whom.
Sources. RT Arabic · Sawaleif — Damascus University's statement · eanlibya.com
Reported from Arabic-language sources; original wording of officials' statements is as translated by those outlets and has not been independently retranslated from a primary transcript.