Nader Bakkar (Photo: Al-Ahram)
Salafist Nour Party's electoral list will include Christian and Niqab-wearing Muslim women, a party official said on Sunday.
Nader Bakkar, the assistant head of media affairs for the party, said in a statement on Sunday that the party's electoral list will include 120 women, including those who are Christian and who wear the Niqab.
Bakkar also revealed that the Salafist Party would not join any electoral alliance.
Last October, president Youness Makhioun said the party would field female candidates for the elections.
The new parliamentary elections law issued in 2014 stipulates that each list of party-based candidates must include three women, three Coptic Christians, and two representing farmers and workers.
In the 2011 parliamentary elections, the Nour Party — the political arm of Egypt's largest Salafist group, Salafist Calling — came under fire for using flowers in place of women's faces on its flyers and posters promoting its electoral lists. In 2011, the party included very few Niqab wearing women on its electoral list.
The Salafist Nour Party has consistently been criticised for its ultra-conservative views of women and Christians.
Egyptian parliamentary elections are expected to take place later in the year after the amendment of parliamentary election laws.
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