CAIRO Egyptair has grounded a woman pilot for having donned the Muslim headscarf, prompting protests from the Islamist minority in Parliament, the leader of the Islamist bloc said.

Copilot Nermeen Nur was "suspended because she started to wear the hijab," the headscarf worn by many Muslim women in Egypt, said Mohammed Mursi, who heads the bloc of 19 Islamists in Parliament.

Egyptair officials could not be reached for comment, but employees at the state-run airline said that Nur, reported by Arabic newspapers to be a former beauty queen, had been suspended from work after she decided to cover her hair.

While employees working on the ground were allowed to wear the hijab, they said, both pilots and air hostesses were required to remove it before boarding an airplane.

"To us, this is a violation of the constitution, as her wearing a hijab is a constitutional right ... we also (invoke) human rights amendments and the rights of the woman," Mursi told AFP.

Mursi did not say when the islamists would raise the case in the 454-seat legislature.

Mursi said that the government puts pressure on women in other categories of state employment, including teachers and TV announcers, not to don the hijab.

Female students who wear the face-covering niqab veil, worn by a small minority of Egyptian women, have been barred in recent years from attending both state and private universities.

Although Egypt's Constitution declares Islamic shariato be the main source of legislation, and both outspoken secularists and heterodox Muslims have faced prosecution in the courts, the government is also eager to dispel Western perceptions the country is a center for Muslim extremism.