But like others of her generation, Nawal is not always popular in her feminism. For example, she is against Muslim women (or women of any religion) covering their hair or their faces. Brought up in a Muslim family, Nawal was religious up to a point, and then she rejected it strongly. When I ask her about her views on the veil, she says: "Everybody is very much interested in the physical veil – the religious Islamic veil. But what we don’t see is the veil of the mind. We are all exposed to the veil of the mind, by education, by religion, by patriarchy, by fear, by marriage, by the moral code. As women, we are always pushed to be hidden, to be veiled, even if we are not aware of that." As I find out, Nawal is just as against women wearing very heavy makeup and the sort of 'naked feminism' that has been popularised by American celebrities like Kim Kardashian, as she is women wearing veils. "In Egypt, you find contradictions, because there is the Islamisation of Egypt, and the Americanisation of Egypt. Nakedness and veiling go hand in hand. Some Egyptian women, like the Americans, show their breasts and wear mini skirts and a lot of makeup, and then other women are very veiled. In the middle you have women who accommodate Islamisation and Americanisation, so they cover their head and their hair, but they uncover their belly with jeans that are very low and the stomach is visible. So in fact women are really oppressed by both Islamisation and Americanisation."