The lower court ruled in favour of el-Zeini and obliged the university to allow students wearing a face veil on campus. The university refused to execute the decision and appealed the verdict. The case was transferred to the Circuit of Unification of Principles, an 11-judge committee of the Supreme Court, for a decision. In 2007, the court ruled that the American University in Cairo was wrong to bar a woman who wears the niqāb from using its facilities. The court cited personal and religious freedom as grounds for its ruling. On October 3, 2009, on a tour of an Al-Azhar girls’ school, Al-Azhar's Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, also referred to as Tantawi, ordered an 11-year-old pupil to remove the niqāb, saying that "the niqāb is only a custom and has no connection to Islam". Four days later, Al-Azhar Supreme Council, which Tantawi headed, passed a resolution banning the wearing of the niqāb in all-girl Al-Azhar classrooms and dorms. This ban applied to all levels: elementary schools, high schools, and colleges. The Minister for Higher Education, Hani Hilal announced later that the niqāb would also not be allowed in women's dormitories in public universities for security reasons. The decision, the minister said, followed fifteen incidents in which men had been caught attempting to enter dormitories disguised as women. Hilal said that female students were allowed to wear the niqāb on campus. However, the students had to take off the niqāb upon entering the dorms, so as to protect the girls from men that might enter the area disguised as women. In December 2009, the President of Ain Sham University expelled students wearing the niqāb from the university's hostel. The Court of Administrative Justice issued upheld the right of students wearing the face veil to reside in the girls' dormitories of public universities and suspended the decision, stating that the expulsion was a breach of personal liberty and violated the right to education, including the right to equal access to university services and buildings. The Al-Azhar decision prompted heated discussions in the media, with debates on religion, personal freedom, the role of religious institutions in society, and the identity of Egyptian society. Even though this was not the first decision concerning the wearing of the niqāb, the fact that the order came from Egypt's highest seat of Islamic teaching provoked outcries from both conservatives and civil liberty campaigners.