The clip shows Gamal Abdel Nasser telling a crowd that the Muslim Brotherhood’s General Guide once asked him to make veiling compulsory for women. Nasser’s answer, that the Guide could not make his own daughter veil, gets the laughter. The speech is usually dated to 1958, but the sources do not agree on that date, and the alleged demand itself has no independent record behind it. Treat the clip as evidence that Nasser told this story in public, not as proof that the Brotherhood made the request.
What the clip shows
The circulated video is a short excerpt of a longer speech. In it, Nasser says that in 1953 he tried to reach an accommodation with the Muslim Brotherhood. In his telling, the first demand the Brotherhood’s leader made was that women be required to wear the hijab, or tarha (a scarf). Nasser then turns the demand back on the leader, and the audience laughs.
Scroll.in’s 2016 presentation of the clip reports the scene and the laughter. Its headline and deck give a shorter line in English: “You want me to put a tarha (scarf) on 10 million women? Myself?” That line appears in Scroll’s framing of the clip, not in a verified transcript, so quote it as Scroll’s rendering. The source is Scroll.in’s video page.
When was it recorded?
The answer depends on which source you read. None of them supplies a confirmed recording date.
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| Source | Date given for the speech | Date given for the meeting Nasser describes | Basis stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scroll.in (2016) | “Believed to be from 1958” | 1953 | Editorial framing of the clip |
| Wikimedia Commons file record | “Possibly 1958. Unknown for sure, but prior to his death in 1970.” | Not stated as a separate date | The file identifies a YouTube upload as its immediate source; the original source and author are unknown |
| EgyptToday (2018) | Placed thirteen years after the 1952 revolution, which points to about 1965 rather than 1958 | 1953 | A later account of Nasser’s remarks |
The EgyptToday marker is the most important detail for a careful reader. Thirteen years after 1952 is 1965, which does not match the 1958 label the clip usually carries. Until an original recording with a verifiable date turns up, the label “1958” should be written as “commonly dated to 1958” or “possibly 1958,” and the 1953 date belongs to the meeting Nasser describes, not to the recording.
The Commons record is the most cautious of the three. Its file page, Gamal Abdel Nasser on the Muslim Brotherhood (subtitled), also gives an English caption that describes the claim about the Brotherhood’s demand as “unsubstantiated (and most likely untrue).” Because the uploader and original source are unknown, the file cannot be traced back to an archive or broadcast with a date.
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The 1953 meeting Nasser describes
Nasser’s story concerns a private meeting in 1953 with the Brotherhood’s General Guide. According to EgyptToday’s 2018 account, the General Guide asked Nasser to require women to veil, to close cinemas and theaters, and to keep women from working. The same account reports that Nasser refused the demands and used the daughter line as his reply.
Every version of this story rests on Nasser’s own telling. EgyptToday’s article, which is here, is a later report of what Nasser said. It shows that the account circulated and was repeated, but it does not add an independent witness to the private conversation. The meeting itself cannot be confirmed from the sources available.
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Quotations and what they can support
Three lines from the clip are quoted most often. Each needs a different level of attribution.
- The daughter line. EgyptToday renders Nasser as saying: “If you are not able to make your daughter wear a veil, [how] would you want me to [force] 10 million women to wear veils in the country?” The brackets are part of EgyptToday’s English rendering, so they reflect the translation and not Nasser’s words. Quote it as a translation.
- The ten-million figure. This number is part of Nasser’s speech as reported and translated. It is rhetoric, not a population statistic, and it should not be used as one.
- The Scroll deck line. The “tarha on 10 million women” line appears in Scroll’s presentation. Attribute it to Scroll’s rendering of the speech.
Across all three, the English wording varies by translator. Readers searching “Nasser hijab speech” or “what did Nasser say about the hijab” should be pointed to the clip and the sources above, not to a single verbatim transcript.
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The historical setting: who was unveiled
The laughter in the clip works because the audience shares a social picture in which compulsory veiling would be absurd. The historical context supports part of that picture. The Symbolic Power of the Veil, published by Policy Exchange and available as a PDF, describes many elite urban Egyptian women, particularly in Cairo and Alexandria, as unveiled from the 1940s through the 1970s. It treats the veil as a contested political and cultural symbol rather than as a simple marker of religious practice.
That description does not mean every Egyptian woman went unveiled. It describes a particular group in particular cities. The clip’s audience and the women described in the Policy Exchange text are not the whole of Egyptian society, and the clip should not be read as a statement about rural communities or women outside the elite urban setting.
How to cite the clip responsibly
- Name the speaker and the claim as Nasser’s. Write “Nasser said” or “Nasser recounted,” not “the Brotherhood demanded.”
- Give the date as “commonly dated to 1958” and the meeting as “1953, according to Nasser’s account.”
- Note that the Commons file calls the Brotherhood demand “unsubstantiated (and most likely untrue).”
- Mark any English line as a translation, and name the translator or outlet.
- Do not generalise from the urban audience in the clip to Egyptian women as a whole.
Following these steps keeps the anecdote precise: it is a claim Nasser made, dated uncertainly, about a meeting no independent source confirms.
Other examples and further reading on the veil in twentieth-century Egypt are available in the Policy Exchange PDF cited above.
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