Cairo: A call by a prominent secular journalist for Egypt’s Muslim women to take off the hijab headdress has triggered huge controversy in the predominantly Muslim country.

Sherif Al Choubachy has urged Egyptian women to hold a rally in the iconic Tahrir Square in Cairo next month to remove the widely popular headgear, which he said is a symbol of political Islamism.

“Since its ascendancy on the political scene, political Islamism has exploited the hijab to attain its goals,” Al Choubachy, who is an Egyptian, posted on his Facebook page days ago. “I lived in Egypt in the 1950s when there was no hijab and it was a beautiful time of morals. Today, the hijab is everywhere, but values have collapsed.”

He added that his rally proposal is inspired by Egypt’s pioneering feminist Huda Sha’arawy who in 1923 removed her face veil in public, a daring act at the time signalling rebellion against restrictions on women. She founded the first Egyptian feminist union.

The vast majority of Egypt’s Muslim women nowadays wear the hijab in public, a trend that secularists attribute to the rise of political Islamism in the country since the 1970s. The Muslim Brotherhood came to power after winning Egypt’s parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012. The Islamist group was deposed by the army a year later following enormous street protests against its rule.

Al Choubachy’s proposal has brought him under scathing criticism. Al Azhar, Egypt’s top Islamic body, condemned the call as a “flagrant infringement of human freedom and dignity”.

“The hijab is mandatory for female Muslims once they reach the age of puberty,” said Abbas Shuman, a senior Al Azhar official. “It’s unacceptable for anyone to ask a Muslim woman to quit praying, fasting or Haj [pilgrimage],” Shuman said, referring to mandatory Islamic duties. “Those advocates of liberty should allow the Muslim girl freedom to show her observance of her religion’s teachings just as the non-committed girl is given the freedom not to wear it [the Islamic headscarf].”

Al Choubachy, who is a Muslim, has drawn criticism from rights campaigners too.

“Freedom does not accept imposing ideas on people whether on religious or secular grounds,” said Hafez Abu Saeda, who heads the non-governmental group, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights. “Assailing the hijab represents extremism,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, rights activist Majda Faraj, a rights activist, has filed a legal complaint against Al Choubachy, accusing him of stirring sedition in the country.

Al Choubachy shrugged off the complaint, vowing on Friday to go ahead with what he called the “war “ to confront militant ideas, according to private newspaper Al Watan.

There was no comment from the Egyptian government on the furore. Nor is it clear yet if authorities will authorise the rally suggested by Al Choubachy.

Earlier this year, President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, a self-proclaimed pious Muslim, called for a “religious revolution” to help root out violent militancy in Egypt.