Nora Illi, a Swiss convert to Islam who believed Muslim women should have the right to wear full-body veils and publicly challenged bans against them, died on March 23 in Bern, Switzerland. She was 35.

The cause was breast cancer, said Ferah Ulucay, the secretary general of the Swiss Central Islamic Council. Ms. Illi had been the organization’s representative for women’s affairs.

In 2009, Ms. Illi and her husband, Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi, helped found the organization as Switzerland was debating a proposal to ban minarets, the prayer towers on mosques. (The ban was passed.)

The Swiss Central Islamic Council sought to promote knowledge of Islam in Switzerland and gained several thousand followers, many of them Swiss converts to Islam. But it was also criticized by centrist Muslims for its radical interpretations of the religion, and it came under the scrutiny of the Swiss authorities because of its links to known Salafist preachers, who promote a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.