Hijab campaigns spark controversy in Syria and prompt intervention by the Ministry of Religious Endowments
Campaigns led by Sheikh Al-Dhahabi, an Egyptian national who is wanted by the Egyptian authorities, have sparked intense controversy in a country struggling to recover from a prolonged period of war, political instability and widespread sectarian incitement on social media.
A campaign launched by the Egyptian cleric Al-Dhahabi to promote what he calls “religiously prescribed hijab” in Syria has triggered widespread debate and criticism on social media after he attempted to organize an event at one of Damascus’s major shopping centers. The event was blocked by the Ministry of Religious Endowments, turning the issue into a matter of public debate amid accusations that the preacher, who is wanted in Egypt, was attempting to impose religious guardianship over Syrian women.
Sharp criticism has focused on the nature of Al-Dhahabi’s activities concerning hijab and clothing, the limits governing religious events in public spaces, and the regulatory role of government authorities in overseeing such activities.
The Ministry of Religious Endowments denied that its decision to reject the “Al-Dhahabi Campaign for Religious Hijab” event at Sham City Center was related to the type of clothing distributed by the campaign. The ministry presented an entirely different account from the one given by Al-Dhahabi.
Samer Bayrakdar, deputy minister of Religious Endowments, said the ministry had asked the organizers to submit a religious outreach plan to serve as the basis for their activities, but they refused and threatened to publicize the matter on Facebook. He stressed that the ministry supports religious preaching and faith-based activities, adding that activities held in mosques and public spaces would be supervised by scholars and preachers accredited by the Supreme Fatwa Council and the Ministry of Religious Endowments.
Activists welcomed Bayrakdar’s response after Al-Dhahabi’s campaigns spread across several governorates, amid growing frustration among many people over the absence of anyone willing to put an end to them.
Al-Dhahabi became more widely known following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, when he began launching campaigns to distribute clothing presented as religiously prescribed attire. Initially, the campaign appeared to be one of the manifestations of the disorder accompanying Syria’s new phase, but it soon revealed a structured organization and a geographical reach extending across all Syrian governorates.
The campaign was no longer merely a limited activity. It evolved into a project that appeared to seek to impose control over women’s bodies at the heart of public life. Al-Dhahabi published documents that he said proved he had obtained permits from local religious-endowment directorates to conduct his campaigns. However, he did not produce documents from the Ministry of Education, even though his campaigns also extended to schools and universities.
Among the most notable reactions was that of an activist who criticized what he described as the provocative behavior of the Egyptian preacher Al-Dhahabi. According to the activist, Al-Dhahabi had left Egypt and chosen Syria to impose hijab on women “in the manner of ISIS,” an approach that, in his view, has no connection to Islam and does not resemble the diverse and generally modest traditional clothing found across Syria’s different regions. He argued that Al-Dhahabi was acting as though Syria were “a country without authority,” describing the preacher as “a ticking time bomb, with the hijab only the beginning.”
Journalist and political activist Huda Abu Nabut called on the relevant Syrian authorities to clarify “which Syrian law allows him to promote this strange and bizarre clothing, brought from the Middle Ages, to Syrian women who enjoy freedom of belief and dress and make their own choices, without being subjected to campaigns bearing the slogan of his organization and his own name, as though he were the great conqueror responsible for Muslim affairs in Syria and the guardian of Syrian women’s morality.”
Sheikh Al-Dhahabi’s campaigns have provoked anger among a broad segment of Syrians because they come after a prolonged period of war and political instability, amid widespread sectarian incitement on social media that threatens social peace in the country.
His name has also emerged recently in connection with the disappearance of Batoul Suleiman Alloush, an undergraduate student, and subsequently in the controversy surrounding the “House of Sisters” in Jableh. It has been rumored that the facility was established to house women who had allegedly been “abducted” or “guided toward the faith,” but significant uncertainty remains surrounding the facility, the entity operating it and its actual purpose. The Ministry of Social Affairs has denied that the facility holds an official license.
In early March, Al-Dhahabi thanked the family of “Rose,” an Alawite medical student, saying that they had allowed her to wear religious attire “entirely of her own will and choice.” He returned to the story in mid-May as the Batoul Alloush case gained momentum and became one of the most prominent examples cited in calls for the “guidance” of Alawite girls, amid conflicting accounts over whether they had been abducted or had left their families voluntarily.
In one of his posts, Al-Dhahabi offered a direct explanation for what he portrayed as the attraction of these girls. He claimed that women belonging to “esoteric sects” could not be trusted with the secrets of their religion and were therefore, according to his reasoning, less convinced by it, while men faced persecution when they “openly displayed their Islam.” He ended his post with a revealing statement: “The Syrian revolution said: we want freedom… and here is freedom.”
According to media reports, Sheikh Al-Dhahabi’s real name is Hani Dahab. He studied at the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University, where he reportedly became close to the prominent Salafi preacher Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni.
In 2008, Egyptian authorities arrested him on allegations of belonging to a jihadist group. Following the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution, he was released in early 2011. As the conflict intensified, he left Egypt for Syria around 2012, where he joined the Al-Nusra Front and worked as a religious official in the coastal region. He sustained a serious injury there, the effects of which remain visible, before leaving Syria in mid-2015 for a third country.
For years, he became known on social media as “Sheikh Al-Dhahabi” and led extensive campaigns to distribute what was described as “religiously prescribed clothing” to women and girls. The campaigns covered numerous areas, including Idlib, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, the Ghouta, Damascus’s Mezzeh district, Hasakah, Deir ez-Zor and Latakia.
In February 2024, several former Egyptian fighters who had fought in Syria issued a statement announcing that they completely disassociated themselves from him. They described him as “untrustworthy” and accused him of collecting substantial sums of money in the name of fighters and people affected by the conflict without providing documentation for more than a small portion of the funds.
Al-Dhahabi responded angrily to his critics, dismissing their accusations as “chatter, female malice, argument, defamation, collaboration and naivety,” while insisting that he would continue collecting donations and organizing his campaigns.
