Linking hijab controversy to fears of Islamic extremism may be counter-productive.<\/p>\n
By Abdumomun Mamaraimov in Jalalabad and Saodat Asanova in Dushanbe (RCA No. 556, 14-Nov-08)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe face a difficult choice \u2013 take the headscarf off or give up on school,\u201d said Sahiba Yusupova, whose daughters are under increasing pressure from their school in southern Kyrgyzstan to remove headscarves on the grounds that they are too public a display of Muslim faith.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yusupova has already had to take her elder daughter out of school in Jalalabad and send her off to the capital Bishkek to study at a private Turkish-run institution. Now the second of her three daughters is having trouble.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heads and teaching heads won\u2019t listen \u2026 I see this as a kind of purge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Seventeen years after the Soviet Union collapsed and people began to practice their faith more freely, religion remains a contentious issue in the predominantly Muslim Central Asia republics, where secular governments are fearful of Islamic extremists.<\/p>\n
The Muslim woman\u2019s headscarf continues to embody the tensions between governments and their more devout citizens. The battle is being played out at universities and in the workplace, but most of all in the schools where the authorities have greater powers to enforce a dress code.<\/p>\n
Neither side appears ready to give ground. IWPR interviews in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan revealed uncompromising stances on either side, backed by a whole set of attitudes and grievances about the other. Muslim women who want to wear headscarves believe their human rights are under threat from abusive state officials, while to many officials, outward signs of adherence to Islam reflect an unreasonable and potentially extremist state of mind.<\/p>\n
In Kyrgyzstan, IWPR looked primarily at the situation in the schools, where the issue arises every autumn at when a new school year begins and girls turn up wearing headscarves. In the past, schools tolerated the practice, but last year many of them began insisting that scarves did not count as part of the prescribed uniform and warning that anyone who broke the rules would be excluded. (See Kyrgyzstan: Hijab Row as New School Year Begins<\/strong><\/span>, RCA RCA No. 511, 04-Oct-07.)<\/p>\n The debate became more acute this year following a set of instructions issued by the Kyrgyz education ministry to reinforce the school uniform rules. The ministry says the document is more of a recommendation than a rule-book, but schools are interpreting it as an outright ban and girls are being excluded for flouting it.<\/p>\n In the education sector in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, \u201chijab\u201d \u2013 the requirement for modest dress which can include both a headcovering and a long over-garment \u2013 usually means only a headscarf tied under the chin. To complicate matters, the looser headscarves tied backwards that are commonly worn by women in the region are considered \u201cnon-religious\u201d and therefore acceptable by the authorities.<\/p>\n Tajikistan imposed a formal ban on hijab in both schools and universities in autumn 2005. At the time, Deputy Education Minister Farhod Rahimov said girls who disobeyed would be expelled. Education Minister Abdujabor Rahmonov has equated wearing hijab with conducting \u201cpropaganda for religious ideas in a secular society\u201d, while his officials have explained that the ban was needed because of the growth of radical groups which want to use Islam as an instrument to undermine the state.<\/p>\n EXCLUDED FROM SCHOOL FOR WEARING HIJAB<\/p>\n When Ayjarkyn Kamaldin Kyzy took to wearing a headscarf one month ago, she was immediately excluded from her secondary school in the southern Kyrgyz city of Jalalabad.<\/p>\n Ayjarkyn recalled what happened when her mother was called in to discuss the issue. \u201cThe school head made fun of me in front of my mother, saying the next thing would be that I\u2019d come in wearing a \u2018paranja\u2019,\u201d she said, referring to a long-obsolete Central Asian version of the Afghan burka.<\/p>\n \u201cThe head of studies Alla Vladimirovna and some of the teachers accused me of wearing the headscarf for fashion reasons. That was offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike many other wearers, Ayjarkyn is not supported by her parents. Her father Kamildin says she took to praying and wearing conservative dress after a summer job at the market where she worked alongside devout Uzbek girls.<\/p>\n \u201cWe aren\u2019t against praying, but why wrap yourself in a headscarf?\u201d he asked. \u201cWe\u2019re worried our daughter has fallen under the sway of extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGrown ups don\u2019t understand,\u201d responded Ayjarkyn. \u201cI want to go to school, but I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Ayjarkyn belongs to a Kyrgyz family. Although strict adherence to Islam was traditionally more common among the sizeable Uzbek minority of southern Kyrgyzstan, in recent years the wearing of Muslim-style headscarves has become more popular among Kyrgyz women as well.<\/p>\n In Kyrgyzstan, the headscarf dispute is most apparent in the south, and although it is hard to assess the scale, Jalalabad\u2019s education department estimates that there are seven or eight cases in each of the city\u2019s 20 schools.<\/p>\n Local teacher Mukarram Muminova says her observations suggest there are up to 15 girls in each school who want to be allowed to wear hijab. \u201cIn addition, many have simply stopped coming to school because of the headscarf issue,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Zilola Akbarhojaeva, who is Uzbek, is in seventh grade at a school in Jalalabad in the south of Kyrgyzstan. She has been wearing a headscarf for the last four years and is a good student but every year it is getting tougher.<\/p>\n At the start of the academic year on September 1, the school authorities said she was at the wrong school because of where she lives and would have to go somewhere else. But as the argument progressed, it quickly became apparent that the real reason for attempting to get her to leave was her headscarf. After her parents discussed the matter with the local education department, an uneasy compromise was reached where Zilola can wear the scarf on a temporary basis on the grounds that she has a sore ear.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not against the uniform \u2013 we have bought everything the school asks for,\u201d said her mother Saida. \u201cThe only thing we\u2019re asking for is that they let our daughters wear headscarves. We bought white ones that look nice and don\u2019t make them look very different from the other kids. But the school has banned even this.<\/p>\n \u201cThey treat them very badly at school; they humiliate them and insult our religious sensibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n The ban on hijab in Kyrgyz schools extends to teachers as well as pupils. A male head teacher who asked to remain anonymous, disagrees with the ban but says it is being widely applied in Jalalabad region.<\/p>\n \u201cIt goes against religious convictions and also local custom, which requires married women to wear headscarves,\u201d he said. \u201cA school\u2026 recently refused to take on a young teacher who wouldn\u2019t remove her headscarf.\u201d<\/p>\n IWPR found similar cases in Tajikistan, where religion plays a similarly contentious role. Mamnuna Karimova complains that her 13 year old daughter Mavzuna faces outright discrimination at her school in the northern Sogd region,<\/p>\n \u201cMy child wears a headscarf not because it\u2019s fashionable but because of the religious views of our family,\u201d she said. \u201cNow she gets a lot of humiliation at school. The children see how negatively the teachers view these girls \u2013 making them take their headscarves off in public or barring them from lessons \u2013 and that behaviour naturally provides [schoolchildren with] a motive for mistreating them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Garm valley of eastern Tajikistan, where Islam has traditionally had a strong hold, has seen many girls dropping out of school because of the headscarf ban.<\/p>\n Local teacher Halima Yunusova claims pupils\u2019 insistence on wearing hijab is a pretext. \u201cAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, many girls stopped going to school after [the penultimate] year nine, mainly because of early marriage and concerns at home. Now they\u2019re campaigning to wear hijab because then they\u2019ll be officially banned from going to school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n TAJIK BAN EXTENDS TO UNIVERSITY<\/p>\n However, claims that women are deliberately trying to drop out of education are clearly not true of those who go on to university. Malohat Sobirova, who comes from a remote village in southern Tajikistan, found it impossible to continue at university because of the general hostility to her insistence on wearing hijab.<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted to get a higher education, have a career and be a useful member of society, but unfortunately I was excluded because I wear hijab,\u201d she said. \u201cIt got to a point where I felt like an outcast. I couldn\u2019t keep on fighting for my rights so I had to go back home to my village. I abandoned my dream of higher education and now I\u2019m unemployed.\u201d<\/p>\n She insists she was right not to give in, \u201cI grew up in a traditional Muslim family and I regard it as an obligation to wear hijab. I can\u2019t appear in public without my head being covered; that\u2019s unacceptable for a true Muslim woman.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, student Davlatmo Ismailova brought the first and so far only court case against the education ministry and the Institute of Foreign Languages, which had excluded her for wearing hijab.<\/p>\n She lost her case, and remains bitter about it. \u201cUnder the constitution, all citizens of Tajikistan are supposed to be equal, but my case showed that if spiritual values don\u2019t coincide with spiritual ones, girls like me have no chance of getting a good education and working anywhere prestigious,\u201d she told IWPR.<\/p>\n By contrast, another student, Rahima Davronova, has opted for a compromise with the authorities at Khujand State University in the north of Tajikistan. Outside the premises, she can tie her scarf under the chin to fulfil the hijab requirements, but when she goes in she knots it behind her head to make it into the traditional Tajik headscarf with no religious connotations. \u201cI just use a big scarf,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n OFFICIALS DENY EXISTENCE OF BAN<\/p>\n Unlike Tajikistan, where the hijab ban is official, education officials in Kyrgyzstan are quick to insist no instructions have been given to schools, merely a recommendation.<\/p>\n According to Chyrmash Dooronov, head of the education department for Jalalabad city, school heads \u201chave no right to stop children attending classes\u201d, since the order issued by the education ministry does not explicitly ban headscarves, but simply fails to mention them in the list of required uniform items.<\/p>\n Kylym Sydyknazarova of the national education ministry\u2019s schools department says the document is really only a set of general guidelines.<\/p>\n \u201cThe education ministry recommended that schools opt for a single school uniform themselves; in other words, that parents and teachers decide what the uniform should be and set this down in the school rules,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can neither allow or forbid the wearing of headscarves.\u201d<\/p>\n Abdumalik Sharipov of local human rights group Spravedlivost says the ministry document does not say anything about headscarves, so \u201ceverything that isn\u2019t forbidden by law should be allowed\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cNone of the schools in Jalalabad that we asked could produce a copy of the order. It isn\u2019t clear what they are basing their ban on\u2026. If the order did ban the wearing of headscarves, we\u2019d contest it in court,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Attempts by local government education officials to blame the schools for the hijab ban may be disingenuous. One school headmaster confirmed that local officials were exerting verbal pressure on schools to change their internal rules. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t initiate that by ourselves as the parents wouldn\u2019t back this kind of change to the rules,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n EQUATING HIJAB WITH ISLAMIC EXTREMISM<\/p>\n As officials argue their case, the subtext to the dispute rapidly becomes clear \u2013 they are hostile to headscarves because they regard Islamic clothing as an external sign of radical extremist views.<\/p>\n In both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, their main concern is Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group that advocates the removal of Central Asian secular governments and the creation of an Islamic state. Although members insist it is non-violent, regional governments have blamed it for a number of attacks over the years. Despite sweeping arrests in Uzbekistan, and smaller numbers of detentions in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the group still attracts new members, in part because its messages speak to socially and economically marginalised groups in a way that governments seem unable to do. (For more on this, see Islamic Group Quietly Builds Support in Kyrgyzstan<\/strong><\/span>, RCA No. 516, 16-Nov-07.)<\/p>\n Unlike other regional states, the Kyrgyz criminal code does not explicitly ban Hizb-ut-Tahrir membership, although the country\u2019s Supreme Court issued a ruling prohibiting the group from operating in 2003, and the constitution prohibits faith-based political parties in general.<\/p>\n In Dooronov\u2019s view, in some cases Hizb ut-Tahrir has \u201caddled parents\u2019 minds\u201d, while in others it is the children themselves who are drawn towards the group. In the former case, he would like to see \u201cirresponsible\u201d parents prosecuted for depriving their children of an education.<\/p>\n Damira Alimjanova, who used to head the regional educational department and now serves as deputy governor of Jalalabad, is a well-known opponent of headscarves in schools. Like other officials, she says schools should not exclude wearers, but she remains extremely suspicious of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to accuse all headscarf-wearers of extremism, but how can one be sure there aren\u2019t some among them?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n The activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir worry the opponents of hijab in Tajikistan, too. But some like Gallia Rabieva, a member of Tajikistan\u2019s parliament, also look back to the 1992-97 civil war, in which the opposition force was led by Islamic guerrillas. \u201cWe\u2019ve already been burnt by that one\u2026. We are always afraid these religious organisations will try to drive the thin end of the wedge in somewhere else,\u201d she said. \u201cWe fear the secular nature of our state will be placed under threat.\u201d<\/p>\n Recalling Soviet-era campaign against the veil or \u201cparanja\u201d, Rabieva said, \u201cOur grandmothers risked their lives to throw off the paranja in the 1920s\u2026.they fought for women\u2019s freedom, so when I see a young woman dressing herself like that of her own free will, it makes me feel ill.\u201d<\/p>\n Mainstream Muslim groups disagree strongly with such views. They oppose extremists, and say it is wrong to lump all devout people together with radicals.<\/p>\n In Tajikistan, the Islamic Rebirth Party, the civil war-era armed opposition referred to by Rabieva, is now a legal political party and has taken up a number of hijab cases where women felt their rights were being abused.<\/p>\n The head of Kyrgyzstan\u2019s official Islamic establishment, Mufti Murataly-Ajy Jumanov, says his local representatives are dealing with requests for help they have received from hijab wearers.<\/p>\n At the same time, the mufti says the Kyrgyz intelligence services have good reason to be concerned about extremist groups. \u201cYou have to understand them; they have a job to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n By contrast, the muftiate\u2019s representative in Jalalabad, Abibilla-Aju Bapanov, is more outspoken in his opposition to the way the state authorities are handling the headscarf ban. \u201cIn a country where the overwhelming majority of the population are Muslim, you can\u2019t just copy the Europeans. That might have been possible 15 years ago, but not now, because Islam has taken deep roots in people\u2019s consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n Bapanov\u2019s predecessor as chief cleric in Jalalabad, Dilmurat-Ajy Orozov, goes even further, saying, \u201cThe state doesn\u2019t respect its citizens\u2019 rights, the [parliamentary] deputies don\u2019t see that there\u2019s a problem, and the president isn\u2019t paying any attention.\u201d<\/p>\n Tursunbek Akun is Kyrgyzstan\u2019s human rights ombudsman, and well known as a defender of Muslim rights. On a recent visit to southern Kyrgyzstan, he described the headscarf ban as a \u201cgross violation of human rights\u201d, and promised to make the national authorities aware of the concerns expressed by local people.<\/p>\n MORE NUANCED APPROACHES NEEDED<\/p>\n Some analysts interviewed for this report were more concerned about the spread of Islamic practices than the rights of those who want to wear headscarves. Manuchehra Jumanova, a political scientist in Tajikistan, for example, thinks the authorities there are basically doing the right thing by placing restrictions on what .<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all, we have a secular state, not an Islamic one where all women wear hijab,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Experts in Kyrgyzstan, however, warn that this issue is potentially explosive and the government should therefore try more subtle approach than simply banning \u2013 or appearing to ban \u2013 the wearing of headscarves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very sensitive issue that requires a delicate approach,\u201d said Sania Sagnaeva, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. \u201cThere\u2019s a risk of conflict [even] if there are no other motives for this. This is about society\u2019s tolerance overall. Headscarves are a symbol of belonging to one religion, but officials see the issue as an attempt to dictate terms.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharipov of the Spravedlivost group added, \u201cThere\u2019s no point in unnecessarily creating problems where there aren\u2019t any. They need to allow those who want to wear headscarves to do so and set general guidelines for this,\u201d he said. \u201cHaven\u2019t we enough things engendering popular discontent already \u2013 the energy crisis and price rises?\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cPeople are already saying openly that all this is directed against Islam generally. If the problem isn\u2019t resolved once and for all, parents will demand that new schools be set up where the children can dress according to religious precepts. That would divide society along religious lines.\u201d<\/p>\n Spravedlivost\u2019s leader, Valentina Gritsenko, says her group is planning legal action against Kyrgyz officials who stop girls wearing headscarves and expel them from school.<\/p>\n \u201cThe [local] education departments are breaking two rights at once \u2013 the girls\u2019 right to religious observance and their right to receive an education.\u201d<\/p>\n If the authorities in Kyrgyzstan fail to move, some are warning of growing social tensions.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are planning to hold protest rallies,\u201d said Bapanov. \u201cWe are restraining them and asking them to keep the peace until the matter is resolved through legal channels.\u201d<\/p>\n Jamal Frontbek-Kyzy, who heads the Mutakallim women\u2019s group, has succeeded in getting the authorities to sit up and take notice. Last week, she wrote to President Kurmanbek Bakiev and the Kyrgyz parliament, and a subsequent meeting with officials resulted in a promise to resolve things \u201cin a positive manner\u201d.<\/p>\n Having already won a four-year battle for women to be allowed to keep their headscarves on in passport photos, Frontbek-Kyzy is confident about this campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cI am sure the outcome will be positive, as the headscarf ban was thought up by officials who are not only ill-informed about Islamic issues, but also have a poor knowledge of the constitution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Abdumomun Mamaraimov is an IWPR-trained journalist in Jalalabad, and Saodat Asanova is IWPR Tajikistan Country Director.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Linking hijab controversy to fears of Islamic extremism may be counter-productive. By Abdumomun Mamaraimov in Jalalabad and Saodat Asanova in Dushanbe (RCA No. 556, 14-Nov-08) \u201cWe face a difficult choice \u2013 take the headscarf off or give up on school,\u201d said Sahiba Yusupova, whose daughters are under increasing pressure from their school in southern Kyrgyzstan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kyrgyzstan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}