“I am not only a hymn singer,” said Dalia Ihab Younis. “Singing hymns is only part of what I do, not my entire musical career.”

It is singing hymns, however, that brought this veiled young woman into the spotlight last Christmas when a program on the Extra News Channel broadcast her voice across the airwaves and onto social media. The image of a veiled Muslim woman singing “Ave Maria” naturally sparked debate. Younis is not unhappy with her newfound fame, but it irritates her that it has typecast her as a “morannema” (hymn singer).

“I just want to stress that I am not a ‘morannema’ as the media repeatedly refers to me,” Younis told Al-Monitor. “I sing other music genres, too. In one of my major projects, I am trying to merge classical music with ‘shaabi’ [people or popular] music,” she said, noting that such pieces can be found on her Facebook page.

Among those videos is one of her singing “Ave Maria, O Maiden, O Mother” in the Princeton University Chapel in 2018. She is also recorded singing “Roses for You” at Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in downtown Cairo to express her love of Mary. Neither were formal performances. Rather, the environment within the churches moved her to sing.