Iran protest at enforced hijab sparks online debate and feminist calls for action across Arab world


Balsam Mustafa, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

THE CONVERSATION

Thu, September 22, 2022 

Iranian authorities have cracked down on protests which erupted after the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the morality police for not wearing the hijab appropriately. The death of Mahsa Amini who was reportedly beaten after being arrested for wearing her hijab “improperly” sparked street protests.

Unrest has spread across the country as women burned their headscarves to protest laws that force women to wear the hijab. Seven people are reported to have been killed, and the government has almost completely shut down the internet.

But in the Arab world – including in Iraq, where I was brought up – the protests have attracted attention and women are gathering online to offer solidarity to Iranian women struggling under the country’s harsh theocratic regime.

The enforcement of the hijab and, by extension, guardianship over women’s bodies and minds, are not exclusive to Iran. They manifest in different forms and degrees in many countries.

In Iraq, and unlike the case of Iran, forced wearing of the hijab is unconstitutional. However, the ambiguity and contradictions of much of the constitution, particularly Article 2 about Islam being the primary source of legislation, has enabled the condition of forced hijab.

Since the 1990s, when Saddam Hussein launched his Faith Campaign in response to economic sanctions imposed by the UN security council, pressure on women to wear the hijab has become widespread. Following the US-led invasion of the country, the situation worsened under the rule of Islamist parties, many of whom have close ties to Iran.

Contrary to the claim in 2004 by US president George W. Bush that Iraqi people were “now learning the blessings of freedom”, women have been enduring the heavy hand of patriarchy perpetuated by Islamism, militarisation and tribalism, and exacerbated by the influence of Iran.

Going out without a hijab in Baghdad became a daily struggle for me after 2003. I had to put on a headscarf to protect myself wherever I entered a conservative neighbourhood, especially during the years of sectarian violence.

Flashbacks of pro-hijab posters and banners hanging around my university in central Baghdad have always haunted me. The situation has remained unchanged over two decades, with the hijab reportedly imposed on children and little girls in primary and secondary schools.

A new campaign against the enforced wearing of the hijab in Iraqi public schools has surfaced on social media. Natheer Isaa, a leading activist in the Women for Women group, which is leading the campaign, told me that hijab is cherished by many conservative or tribal members of society and that backlashes are predictable.

Similar campaigns were suspended due to threats and online attacks. Women posting on social media with the campaign hashtag #notocompulsoryhijab, have attracted reactionary tweets accusing them of being anti-Islam and anti-society.

Similar accusations are levelled at Iranian women who defy the regime by taking off or burning their headscarves. Iraqi Shia cleric, Ayad Jamal al-Dinn lashed out against the protests on his Twitter account, labelling the protesting Iranian women “anti-hijab whores” who are seeking to destroy Islam and culture.

Cyberfeminists and reactionary men

In my digital ethnographic work on cyberfeminism in Iraq and other countries, I have encountered numerous similar reactions to women who question the hijab or decide to remove it. Women who use their social media accounts to reject the hijab are often met with sexist attacks and threats that attempt to shame and silence them.

Those who openly speak about their decision to take off the hijab receive the harshest reaction. The hijab is linked to women’s honour and chastity, so removing it is seen as defiance.

Women’s struggle with the forced hijab and the backlash against them challenges the prevailing cultural narrative that says wearing the hijab is a free choice. While many women freely decide whether to wear it or not, others are obliged to wear it.

So academics need to revisit the discourse around the hijab and the conditions perpetuating the mandatory wearing of it. In doing so it is important to move away from the false dichotomies of culture versus religion, or the local versus the western, which obscure rather than illuminate the root causes of forced hijab.

In her academic research on gender-based violence in the context of the Middle East, feminist academic Nadje al-Ali emphasises the need to break away from these binaries and recognise the various complex power dynamics involved – both locally and internationally.

The issue of forcing women to wear the hijab in conservative societies should be at the heart of any discussion about women’s broader fight for freedom and social justice.

Iranian women’s rage against compulsory hijab wearing, despite the security crackdown, is part of a wider women’s struggle against autocratic conservative regimes and societies that deny them agency. The collective outrage in Iran and Iraq invites us to challenge the compulsory hijab and those imposing it on women or perpetuating the conditions enabling it.

As one Iraqi female activist told me: “For many of us, hijab is like the gates of a jail, and we are the invisible prisoners.” It is important for the international media and activists to bring their struggle to light, without subscribing to the narrative that Muslim women need saving by the international community.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Balsam Mustafa receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust (Grant no. ECF-2021-599).

AUTHORITARIANISM REQUIRES SEXUAL REPRESSION

Compulsive chastity in Iran: the citizen is a policeman and the authority incites the prohibition of vice

Karim Shafik - Egyptian journalist
11.04.2023

 Daraj 

The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.

In conjunction with the Iranian regime's frantic moves to confront the rebellion against forced hijab, after an evasive period of calm following the growing protests that followed the killing of the Iranian Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, by the "morality police" patrol, repeated incidents of assault on girls, and violent crackdowns on shops and places that do not impose strict religious restrictions on women.

The growing incidents of assault were carried out by citizens without authority or powers, the latest of which was the brutal attack on a girl and her mother inside a market for not adhering to the compulsory hijab. This can be attributed to hostile religious propaganda promoted by clerics, societal mobilization against girls and women, and incitement to oppression, turning the citizen into a potential policeman to impose coercive chastity.

The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.

The hijab is once seen as a legal issue that must be adhered to to achieve controls within any "legitimate society," in the words of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, in a deliberate confusion between "legitimacy" in its legal and constitutional sense, and "Sharia" in its religious sense, in disregard of the human rights disparity between them. Other times as a religious obligation, this radical discourse is promoted by the religious elite while softening any political pragmatism.

Fundamentalists in parliament pass the legislative structure that helps empower them politically, while representatives of the Wali al-Faqih in Iran's provinces and cities work to "whitewash" radical concepts and values through their societal incubators, through religious policies initiated by the head of the Planning Council for Friday Imams, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari.

Ali Akbari recently sent a "secret, detailed, and critical message" to the Iranian president, in which Friday imams demanded that the hijab be controlled, and launched an attack on the "enemy" who aims to transform the hijab from a cultural issue to societal polarization, and then a political challenge, to dismantle and collapse what he described as the "revolutionary front."

The latest incident will not be the end of the end as Iranian women renounce the forced hijab law, but events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."

The citizen is free from vice

There are solid blocs among the conservative forces in Iran, lined up in the face of those who are out of obedience to the "guardian of the jurist", especially since the feminist movement managed to squander the capital of the symbolic regime, demanding a break with its guardianship policies, and out of the circle of submission in an effort to end authoritarian control.

The failure of the Iranian authority to achieve practical results using traditional repressive policies is accompanied by a new approach that seeks to mobilize societal forces to clash with opponents of the mullahs' policies. This was evident in the hidden support that provides protection to these "new Mutawa'a", the Interior Ministry's statement said after the recent incident, which affirmed "the support of (the ministry) for all those who command virtue and those who forbid vice."

"The judiciary, officers (police) and other relevant agencies will confront the few violators of sanctities and will not allow attacks on the sacred identity of Iranian Muslim women," the interior ministry statement said, adding that videos documented cases of violence in which these "citizens who command virtue and forbid vice" targeted unveiled women.

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Iran's Kayhan newspaper, which is close to the office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, criticized the Interior Ministry's statement as "late" and "ambiguous." He also hinted at collusion or hypocrisy, the circumstances and dimensions of which he did not disclose, by the Ministry of Interior towards this case, describingthe ministry's position as "two-faced."

"As several months pass since the brazen phenomenon of taking off the hijab, the question is whether this delay (the issuance of the Interior Ministry statement) has acceptable reasons," Shariatmadari said.

"The issue of the hijab has turned in recent years into one of the axes of the enemy's cognitive war against the people," the Interior Ministry statement said, pointing out that anti-hijab campaigns, including "White Wednesday", "Girls of Enghelab Street" or "No to the compulsory hijab", "failed and have never been able to undermine the will and determination of Iranian women and girls to preserve their Islamic identity".

It seems that the supervisory mechanisms and strict legal provisions in Iran to legitimize violence against girls rebelling against the hijab, by the parliament and the government, do not seem sufficient in the face of the growing protests since September 2022, in addition to the spread of the phenomenon of girls going out without the hijab, in practice, which surprised the government during the recent holidays, specifically Nowruz. Thus, the regime seeks societal mobilization to create a soft ground around the protests and weaken their continuation.

The brutal attack on a girl and her mother in the city of "Mashhad", which was carried out by a man who entered into a violent contact with them, ended with throwing their heads with a milk can, and then an arrest warrant was issued against the three parties, which is not the first of its kind, but coincides with direct and continuous incitement by state institutions and agencies. Especially the Iranian judiciary, which stressed the need to prosecute women who oppose the obligation to wear headscarves and prosecute them "without mercy."

The Return of Iran's Hijab Crisis: The Opportunism of the "Ayatollahs" and the Misery of Ideology

The uprising of Iranian women and the question of the suspicious veil

The beginning of the confrontation

Iranian journalist Daoud Heshmati writes that the latest incident will not be the end of the day as Iranian women renounce the compulsory hijab law, but rather that events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."

The head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ajei, threatened to prosecute non-veiled women "without mercy or compassion for them," and considered this behavior as "hostility to our values" in the "Islamic Republic," and continued: "If the violations are arrested, the judiciary will decide on the matter, and will prosecute everyone who has a role in these cases, from a causative to a collaborator and accomplice." "Taking off the hijab contradicts public chastity and the principles of Sharia and law," he said, adding that "the enemy supports taking off the hijab" in Iran.

The opinion of the Iranian president is hardly different from what the head of the judiciary said, as Raisi stressed that the hijab is "a religious necessity and a divine and Quranic command," noting that "it is a legal obligation and following the law is agreed upon by all," stressing that "everyone must abide by the hijab and chastity." "Our daughters and women, once again, by adhering to the hijab will show their commitment to the law and religious necessities."

The deputy head of the cultural body in the conservative Iranian parliament, Bijan Nobawah, stressed the need to deal with the issue of the hijab with "firmness", "comprehensive approach" and "decisive", taking into account that there are about 32 parties responsible for the issue of "chastity and hijab", all of whom have failed to achieve positive results.

"The person who commits this mistake is necessary and knows that the entire system is watching him and will punish him," the MP said, pointing out that if "the removal of the hijab and the adoption of emotional behavior are not comprehensively and resolutely confronted, the violators of sanctity will exceed this limit, and then we will witness more nudity and violation of sanctities."

The Iranian leader accused the "enemies", as he described it, of being behind the spread of the phenomenon of non-hijab, and said that "the enemy is working according to a plan and we have to confront this in a calculated and programmed manner. Taking off the hijab is forbidden legally and politically."

He continued: "Many of those who take off the hijab if they knew what is the policy behind this act of what they did," considering that the protests erupted after the killing of Mahsa Amini "conspiracies by enemies," accusing them of "exploiting the issue of women to provoke chaos and affliction. Some at home were deceived, obeying the external enemy and traitors living abroad and raising the slogan of women's freedom."
Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility

As a result, the regime's new and radical turn towards the imposition of the hijab investigates many means of coercion, legal, or mobilization, by managing violence by mobilizing members of society as "lone wolves" and cells working for the regime, which operates with the mentality of far-right organizations.

In addition to the Iranian regime's efforts, other pressures it exerts on the people include the rejection of citizenship rights, which occurred in the announcement of the ban on providing services to non-veiled women, and publications with the same content also spread in schools, universities, hospitals and means of transportation. According to the Tehran metro operator, a warning plan was launched under the title: "Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility," as well as the formation of "chastity and hijab" headquarters in the metro.

A statement issued by Iran's Ministry of Education earlier this month stipulated that educational services be provided only to female students who wear the hijab. The ministry will refuse to "provide educational services to a limited number of female students who do not abide by the rules and regulations of dress codes in schools." With the start of the new Iranian year, the president of the Free Islamic University of Iran, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranji, in an official statement, asked to confront what he considered "violating behaviors, including taking off the hijab" inside the university, and said that "this is the demand of the majority of students."

HINDUTVA INJUSTICE IS SYSTEMIC
India court upholds ban on hijab in schools and colleges

By SHEIKH SAALIQ

1 of 11

Indian students in uniform clothing walk inside the campus of a government-run junior college in Udupi, Karnataka state, India, Feb. 24, 2022. Muslim students in this southern Indian state have found themselves at the center of a debate over hijab bans in schools. The furor began in January when staffers at the college began refusing admission to girls who showed up in a hijab, saying they were violating the uniform code. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)


NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court Tuesday upheld a ban on wearing hijab in class in the southern state of Karnataka, saying the Muslim headscarf is not an essential religious practice of Islam in a ruling that is likely to further deepen religious tensions in the country.

The high court in Karnataka state delivered the verdict after considering petitions filed by Muslim students challenging a government ban on hijabs that some schools and colleges have implemented in the last two months. The ban does not extend to other Indian states, but the court ruling could set a precedent for the rest of the country.

The dispute began in January when a government-run school in Karnataka’s Udupi district barred students wearing hijabs from entering classrooms, triggering protests by Muslims who said they were being deprived of their fundamental rights to education and religion. That led to counterprotests by Hindu students wearing saffron shawls, a color closely associated with that religion and favored by Hindu nationalists.

More schools in the state followed with similar bans and the state’s top court disallowed students from wearing hijab and any religious clothing pending a verdict.

The court in its ruling said the state government had the power to prescribe uniform guidelines for students as a “reasonable restriction on fundamental rights.”

The ruling came at a time when violence and hate speech against Muslims have increased under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist party, which also governs Karnataka state. Over the last few weeks, the issue has become a flashpoint for the battle over the rights of Muslims, who fear they are being shunted aside as a minority in India and see hijab bans as a worrying escalation of Hindu nationalism under Modi’s government.

Some rights activists have voiced concerns that the ban could increase Islamophobia.

“No one can understand our anxiousness about what is to follow,” Afreen Fatima, a New Delhi-based student activist, wrote on Twitter. “The court’s Hijab ban is a great injustice and a very worrying precedence. The scale of its repercussion is going to be brutal and inhuman.”

Karnataka’s education minister B. C. Nagesh told reporters that female Muslim students who were protesting against the ban must respect the court’s verdict and return to classes. He said his government will try to win the hearts of “misguided” students and “bring them in mainstream of education.”

Some Muslim politicians called the verdict disappointing.

“I hope this judgement will not be used to legitimize harassment of hijab-wearing women,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of the Indian parliament.

Ahead of the verdict, the Karnataka government banned large gatherings for a week in state capital Bengaluru “to maintain public peace and order” and declared a holiday Tuesday in schools and colleges in Udupi.

The hijab is worn by many Muslim women to maintain modesty or as a religious symbol, often seen as not just a bit of clothing but something mandated by their faith.

Hijab restrictions have surfaced elsewhere, including France, which in 2004 banned them in schools. But in India, where Muslims make up 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion people, the hijab has historically been neither prohibited nor limited in public spheres. Women donning the headscarf is common across the country, which has religious freedom enshrined in its national charter with the secular state as a cornerstone.

Hijab bans deepen Hindu-Muslim fault lines in Indian state


By SHEIKH SAALIQ


UDUPI, India (AP) — When Aliya Assadi was 12, she wore a hijab while representing her southern Indian state of Karnataka at a karate competition. She won gold.

Five years later she tried to wear one to her junior college, the equivalent of a U.S. high school. She never made it past the campus gate, turned away under a new policy barring the religious headgear.

“It’s not just a piece of cloth,” Assadi said while visiting a friend’s house. She wore a niqab, an even more concealing garment that veils nearly the entire face with just a slit for the eyes, which she dons when away from home. “Hijab is my identity. And right now what they’re doing is taking away my identity from me.”

She’s one of countless Muslim students in Karnataka who have found themselves thrust into the center of a stormy debate about banning the hijab in schools and the Islamic head coverings’ place in this Hindu-majority but constitutionally secular nation.

Indian Muslim student Aliya Assadi dons a niqab, a concealing garment that veils nearly the entire face with just a slit for the eyes, as she arrives at her friend's house in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The issue has become a flashpoint for the battle over the rights of Muslims, who fear they are being shunted aside as a minority in India and see hijab restrictions as a worrying escalation of Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

On Tuesday, an Indian court upheld the ban, saying the Muslim headscarf is not an essential religious practice of Islam.

The hijab is worn by many Muslim women to maintain modesty or as a religious symbol, often seen as not just a bit of clothing but something mandated by their faith. Opponents consider it a symbol of oppression, imposed on women. Hijab supporters deny that and say it has different meanings depending on the individual, including as a proud expression of Muslim identity.

A veiled Indian Muslim student, her hands decorated with henna, talks to her friend as they gather to meet student activists in Kundapur in district Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The furor began in January in India, where Muslims make up just 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion people but are still numerous enough to make it the second-largest Muslim population of any nation, after Indonesia.

Staffers at a government-run junior college in Udupi, a coastal city in Karnataka, began refusing admission to girls who showed up in a hijab, saying they were violating the uniform code.

The students protested by camping outside and holding their lessons there, arguing that Muslim students had long been allowed to wear headscarves at school. More schools in the state soon imposed similar bans, prompting demonstrations by hundreds of Muslim women.

That led to counterprotests by Hindu students wearing saffron shawls, a color closely associated with that religion and favored by Hindu nationalists. They shouted slogans like “Hail Lord Ram,” a phrase that traditionally was used to celebrate the Hindu deity but has been co-opted by nationalists.

At one campus a boy climbed a flagpole and hoisted a saffron flag to cheers from friends. At another a girl in a hijab was met by shouted Hindu slogans from a group of boys; she raised her fist and cried, “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great,” in Arabic.

India's Hindu right wing Bajrang Dal activists donning saffron scarves and waving saffron flags demand a probe in the recent killing of one of their associates in Karnataka's Shivamogga district, during a protest rally in Udupi, Karnataka, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

To quell tensions the state, governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, shut schools and colleges for three days. It then slapped a statewide ban on the hijab in classes, saying “religious clothing” in government-run schools “disturbs equality, integrity and public law and order.”

Some students gave in and attended with their heads uncovered. Others refused and have been barred from school for nearly two months — students like Ayesha Anwar, an 18-year-old in Udupi who has missed exams and is falling behind her peers.

“I feel like we are being let down by everyone,” Anwar said while surrounded by friends in a dimly lit cafe, her voice barely a whisper from behind her cloth veil.

Muslim student Ayesha Anwar, 18, chats with her friends at a cafe in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. Anwar has missed exams and is falling behind her peers, after wearing of the hijab was banned in schools. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Six students sued to overturn the state’s ban, now upheld by the court, arguing it violates their rights to education and religious freedom. One of the plaintiffs to the challenge was Aliya Assadi.

“I’m an Indian and a Muslim,” she said. “When I see this with the point of view of a Muslim, I see my hijab is at a stake, and as an Indian, I see my constitutional values have been violated.”

There’s a cost to her activism: Hindu nationalists doxxed her personal details on social media, unleashing a flood of online abuse and harassment. She lost friends who depicted her actions as Muslim fundamentalism.

But she’s steadfast about wearing the hijab. She first did so as a child, imitating her mother, carefully arranging the headscarf in front of the mirror each morning. Today she enjoys the privacy it affords and the sense of religious pride it conveys: “It makes me confident.”

Indian Muslim student Aliya Assadi, left, holds her mobile phone as she interacts with a friend in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Ayesha Imtiaz, another student barred from school, said she wears it as a token of devotion to Islam but acknowledged that opinions vary even among Muslim women.

“There are so many of my friends who do not wear hijab inside the classroom,” said Imtiaz, 20. “They feel empowered in their own way, and I feel empowered in my own way.”

In her eyes, the bans segregate women according to faith and contravene core Indian values on diversity.

“It’s Islamophobia,” Imtiaz said.

Hijab restrictions have surfaced elsewhere, including France, which in 2004 banned them in schools. Other European countries have enacted regulations for public spaces, usually aimed at the more concealing garments such as niqabs and burqas. Usage of head coverings has divided even some Muslim communities.

In India, the hijab has historically been neither prohibited nor limited in public spheres. Women donning the headscarf is common across the country, which has religious freedom enshrined in its national charter with the secular state as a cornerstone.

An Indian Muslim girl wearing a hijab runs past others wearing burqas during an evening at a beach in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

But critics of Modi say India has steadily drifted from that commitment to secularism and today is deeply fractured along religious lines. The prime minister and top Cabinet officials often perform Hindu rituals and prayers on television, blurring the lines between religion and the state.

Since coming into office in 2014, Modi’s government has passed a raft of laws that opponents call anti-Muslim, though his party rejects accusations of being discriminatory.

Meanwhile calls for violence against Muslims have moved from society’s fringes toward the mainstream. Watchdog groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned that attacks could escalate against Muslims, who are disproportionately represented in India’s most impoverished neighborhoods and in prisons.

Some of the anti-Islam sentiment has specifically targeted women — recently many in the country were outraged by a website that was set up offering a fake “auction” of more than 100 prominent Indian Muslim women, including journalists, activists, artists and movie stars.

People hold placards and candles in Bengaluru, India, during a protest against banning Muslim girls from wearing the hijab in educational institutions in southern Karnataka state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Muslim students allege that behind the counterprotests in Karnataka was Hindu Jagran Vedike, a nationalist group associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right Hindu organization ideologically linked to Modi’s political party.

Mahesh Bailur, a senior member of Hindu Jagran Vedike, denied that his group organized demonstrations and said it only offered “moral support” to the saffron shawls and their cause.

“Today these girls are demanding hijab in colleges. Tomorrow they will want to pray there. Finally, they’ll want separate classrooms for themselves,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”

Bailur, 36, is a proponent of a discredited conspiracy theory that holds Muslims are plotting to convert India’s Hindu population and eventually remake it as an Islamic nation. Demands to wear the hijab in classes, he argued, are part of that.

Manavi Atri, a human rights lawyer based in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, said the hijab ban is among many assaults on expressions of Muslim identity in India today, violates principles of state neutrality on religious matters, and inflates an “us-versus-them philosophy” in a country already riven by sectarian divisions. Most troubling, she said, is the pressure it puts on girls and young women in their formative years.

“This choice (between education and faith) that people are being forced to make is not a choice one has to be exercising at that age,” she said.

A girl in uniform walks into the government-run junior college with a Muslim student wearing burqa in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

In the court case, lawyers for Karnataka state argued that the Quran does not clearly establish wearing the hijab as an essential spiritual practice, so banning it does not violate religious freedom.

Many Muslims reject that interpretation.

On a recent Friday, Rasheed Ahmad, the head imam of Udupi’s grand mosque, delivered a sermon before hundreds of worshippers. His voice thundering through loudspeakers mounted on the minarets, he railed against the bans as an attack on Islam.

“Hijab is not just our right,” he said later in an interview, “but an order from God.”

Assadi said she and the others are determined to prevail.

“We are brave Muslim women,” she said, “and we know how to fight for our rights.”

Indian Muslim students spend time at a cafe after they were denied entry into their college for wearing the hijab in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Police officers stand guard at a gate of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial college after hijab wearing Muslim girl students were denied entry into the campus in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
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Indian students in uniform clothing walk inside the campus of a government-run junior college in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

A Muslim girl wearing a hijab checks photographs taken on her mobile phone at a beach in Udupi, Karnataka state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Rasheed Ahmad, the head imam of Udupi's grand mosque, teaches the Quran to children in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Indian Muslim students wearing burqas leave Mahatma Gandhi Memorial college after they were denied entry into the campus in Udupi, Karnataka state, India, Feb. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

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RACIST CASTISM OF BJP HINDUTVA NATIONALISM

Karnataka 'hijab row': protests spread in India as girls refuse to be told what not to wear

By Rhea Mogul, Manveena Suri and Swati Gupta, 

CNN /ANI/Reuters

Aburqa-wearing college student has become a symbol of resistance in India's Karnataka state, where religious tensions are rising over the right to wear religious clothing to school.

Muskan Khan was attempting to hand in a college assignment in the city of Mandya when she was accosted by a group of Hindu men wearing saffron scarves -- the color of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- according to video posted to social media.

The men heckle her as she makes her way across the school grounds, demanding she take off her face covering, but instead of complying, Khan shouts back "Allahu Akbar" as she punches her fist in the air.

The confrontation illustrates the religious divide that's been widening in Karnataka since a group of girls began protesting outside their government-run school in January after they were denied entry in the classroom for wearing a hijab.

The girls petitioned the state's top court to lift the ban, prompting rival protests from right-wing Hindu students.

On Wednesday the court referred the petition to a larger panel of judges, but no date has been set for hearings.

Activists say the hijab row is yet another example of a broader trend in India -- one that has seen a crackdown on India's minority Muslim population since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP came to power nearly eight years ago.

They say that by denying Muslim women the choice to wear the hijab, the government is denying them their religious freedoms, enshrined in the Indian constitution.

"This is a massive attempt by the BJP to homogenize Indian culture, to make it a Hindu-only state," said 23-year-old Muslim activist Afreen Fatima, who has been protesting in support of the students in her hometown of Allahabad in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state.

"Muslim women are isolated in India. And the situation is getting worse every day."
The 'hijab row'

What started as a small protest made national headlines after several other government-run educational institutions in Karnataka denied entry to students wearing hijabs.


© Altaf Qadri/AP

Indian Muslim woman shouts slogans during a protest

 in Delhi against the ban on Muslim girls wearing hijab in class.

The protests have since spread to other cities. Scores of students took to the streets in India's capital Delhi this month holding placards and shouting slogans to express their anger at the ban. And hundreds more have protested in Kolkata and Hyderabad, Reuters reported.

On Tuesday, BJP-ruled Karnataka ordered a three-day closure of all high schools and colleges amid the growing tensions. And on Wednesday authorities in the state's capital Bengaluru banned protests outside schools for two weeks.

For many Muslim women, the hijab is an integral part of their faith. While it has been seen as a source of controversy in some western countries, in India it is neither banned, nor restricted from being worn in public places.

Karnataka's education minister B.C. Nagesh said he supported banning the hijab in educational institutions, citing the state's mandate on religious attire.

"Government is very firm that the school is not a platform to practice dharma (religion)," he told CNN affiliate CNN News-18.

But experts say the issue runs deeper than a dress code.

Karnataka -- where just 13% of the population is Muslim -- is governed by the BJP.

According to lawyer Mohammed Tahir, who is representing one group of petitioners in court, Karnataka is a "hotbed" of the Hindutva ideology supported by many right-wing groups, which seeks to make India the land of the Hindus.

Karnataka has banned the sale and slaughter of cows, an animal considered sacred to Hindus. It has also introduced a controversial anti-conversion bill, which makes it more difficult for interfaith couples to marry or for people to convert to Islam or Christianity.

And according to Tahir, the lawyer, religious tension in the state will likely increase ahead of pivotal state elections next year.

"These issues (like the hijab ban) are very easy to polarize the entire community for votes," he said.

In a statement Tuesday, the Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy said it "strongly condemns the attempt by Hindutva forces and the BJP government of Karnataka to engulf college and school campuses in the already raging communal fire in the state."

"College campuses have thus been transformed into yet another playing field for the BJP and other right-wing Hindu majoritarians," the statement said.

CNN has attempted to contact the state authorities but did not receive a response.
Muslim women further targeted

The hijab row follows a string of online attacks against Muslim women in India.

In early January, the Indian government was investigating a website that purported to offer Muslim women for sale. It was the second time in less than a year that a fake online auction of that kind sparked outrage in the country.

"They came for us online," said Fatima, who was featured on the online app. "Now, they are directly targeting our religious practice. It started in one college, and grew. I have no reason to believe it will end there."

On Tuesday, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, called the hijab row "horrifying."

"Objectification of women persists -- for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalisation of Muslim women," she wrote on Twitter.

The All India President of the Students' Federation of India, V P Sanu, criticized the hijab ban, saying it was used "as a reason to deny Muslim women's right to education."

Modi referred briefly to Muslim women in a speech in Uttar Pradesh Thursday as that state started voting in local elections.

The Prime Minister said his government "stands with every victim Muslim woman."

He didn't refer to the hijab ban but said the government gave Muslim women "freedom" by scrapping the controversial Muslim practice of triple talaq, which allows a Muslim man to divorce his wife by simply saying the Arabic word for divorce, "talaq", three times. The Indian government criminalized the practice in 2019.

Khan, the student who yelled at the Hindu men, said she was defending her religious rights.

"Every religion has freedom, India is a unity...every religion has freedom," Khan told reporters Wednesday.

"They are following their culture and I am following my culture. They should let us follow our culture and not raise any obstacle."


© ANI/Reuters

Men with saffron scarves outside the college in Mandya, 

Karnataka where Muskan Khan tried to hand in her assignment.

Indian students block roads as row over hijab in schools mounts
By Rupak De Chowdhuri - 

KOLKATA (Reuters) - Hundreds of students in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata on Wednesday chanted slogans and blocked roads in protest of a hijab ban in the southern state of Karnataka, as a row over wearing the head covering in schools intensifies.

The row has drawn in Malala Yousafzai, the campaigner for girls' education and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who survived being shot aged 15 by a Taliban gunman in her native Pakistan in 2012, who asked Indian leaders in a tweet to "stop the marginalisation of Muslim women".


© Reuters/RUPAK DE CHOWDHURI

Protest against the recent hijab ban, in Kolkata

Local media reported last week that several schools in Karnataka had denied entry to Muslim girls wearing the hijab citing an education ministry order, prompting protests from parents and students.

Hindu students mounted counter-protests, flocking to schools in recent days in support of the ban, forcing the Karnataka state government to shut schools and colleges for three days to ease tensions between the two communities.

In one incident in a video widely shared online, a lone Muslim student wearing the hijab is surrounded by Hindu male youths shouting religious slogans while trying to enter her school in Karnataka.

The protesting students in Kolkata on Wednesday were predominantly women wearing hijabs, a Reuters eyewitness said, adding the demonstrations were without incident. The students told Reuters that they plan to reconvene on Thursday.

"We will keep protesting until the government stops insulting the students," said Tasmeen Sultana, one of the protestors. "We want our fundamental rights back…you cannot take away our rights."

Protests have also been planned on Wednesday in India's capital New Delhi.

"Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying. Objectification of women persists — for wearing less or more," Yousafzai said in a tweet late on Tuesday.

The government of Karnataka, where 12% of the population is Muslim and which is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has said in an order that students should follow dress codes set by schools.

Opposition parties and critics accuse the BJP government at federal and state level of discriminating against the minority Muslim population. Modi has defended his record and says his economic and social policies benefit all Indians.

(Writing by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Alasdair Pal and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Malala Yousafzai joins outcry over "horrifying" hijab bans in India

Arshad R. Zargar 

- Yesterday 
 CBS News

New Delhi — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has urged Indian leaders to "stop the marginalization of Muslim women" amid mounting protests over a college's ban on students wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf, or hijab.

Authorities in the southern Indian state of Karnataka on Tuesday ordered schools and colleges to close for three days, and on Wednesday they banned gatherings near all educational institutions for two weeks in a bid to curb the protests, which have drawn counter-protests by Hindu students.

There were reports of dueling protesters pelting each other with stones and of police resorting to force on Tuesday as the demonstrations spread to more colleges and at least two other states.

"Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying," Yousafzai wrote on Twitter, quoting a report in which a Muslim student said she and her classmates were being forced to choose between learning, and wearing the hijab.

"Objectification of women persists — for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalization of Muslim women," wrote Yousafzai, who was 15 when she survived an attack by the Taliban in Pakistan for speaking out on girls' right to education.

The hijab protests in India started in January at a government-run college in Karnataka state's Udupi district, when six teenaged girls were barred from classes for wearing the head covering. The college introduced its ban on the hijab in December, saying the scarves violated school uniform rules.


© Provided by CBS News

Parents of Indian students who were barred from entering their classrooms for wearing the hijab, a headscarf used by Muslim women, argue with a police official outside the college premises in Udupi, India, February 4, 2022. / Credit: Bangalore News Photos/AP

Talks between the protesting students and college administrators failed to resolve the crisis, as more colleges implemented new hijab bans. As the protests started to garner headlines, Hindu students began turning up in schools wearing shawls in saffron — a color that symbolizes India's majority Hindu population — in protest against Muslim women and girls wearing hijabs.

Soon the protests spread, with students holding marches and shouting religious slogans.

One video of a lone Hijab-clad Muslim girl being heckled outside a college by a group of Hindu students in saffron scarves, shouting religious slogans, went viral on Tuesday. It shows the girl responding with shouts of the Muslim refrain "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) before she's escorted away by college staff.

"They started shouting 'Jai Shri Ram' [Hindu proclamation of faith], so I started screaming 'Allahu Akbar,'" Muskan, the Muslim girl, later told Indian news outlet NDTV. "We will continue to protest for the hijab."

On Wednesday, after hearing petitions challenging the hijab bans at colleges in the state, a judge at the Karnataka High Court said it was too serious a matter for a lone arbitrator to rule on, noting that: "These matters give rise to certain constitutional questions of seminal importance in view of certain aspects of personal law."

The court's Chief Justice will now appoint a multiple-judge bench to hear the case.

The hijab standoff has angered much of India's Muslim community, which, at approximately 200 million, is a minority in the country of almost 1.4 billion people.

Many believe Muslims have been marginalized in India for decades, but increasingly during the eight years of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tenure.

Two years ago, Modi faced violent protests by Muslims across the country when his government brought in a new citizenship law that singled out members of the religion.


© Provided by CBS News

Death toll climbs in India protests

India has repeatedly witnessed deadly Hindu-Muslim violence over the course of its 75-year history as an independent nation, with its politics and society deeply divided along religious lines.

That divide is generally highlighted, even exploited, around elections, when political parties try to polarize voters by focusing on religious issues. The current tension around the hijab comes ahead of elections in five states, including in the key state of Uttar Pradesh, where people start heading to the polls on Thursday.

Over the years, Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been accused of running an anti-Muslim campaign and backing violence against minorities, but it rejects all of the allegations.

India: Protests banned as hijab row escalates

Protests and violence over a ban on female students wearing the hijab in some schools led officials to close all educational institutions in a southern Indian state for three days.

Activists such as those from the National Students Unions of India will not be allowed to protest

The Indian city of Bangalore banned protests around schools and other educational institutions for two weeks on Wednesday.

The move comes just 24 hours after all high schools in Karnataka state closed their gates for the remainder of the week as a row over an Islamic headscarf ban intensified.

The southern Indian state, of which Bangalore is the capital, closed all educational institutions for three days beginning Wednesday, as protests and violence escalated over the decision of some colleges to prohibit female students from wearing the hijab or a headscarf in classrooms.

On Tuesday, clashes between Muslim students against the ban and those supporting it broke out. Stone-throwing, arson and baton charges by police took place in several towns in Karnataka state, NDTV news channel reported.

The debate in southern India is raging over whether the government can implement such a ban. Legal action, as well as angry protests, has been threatened against the local government.

'Horrifying' hijab ban, says prominent activist

Outrage at the ban has spilled over onto social media, with Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai tweeting her support for the young women's right to wear the hijab.

"College is forcing us to choose between studies and the hijab," she said. "Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying. Objectification of women persists — for wearing less or more. Indian leaders must stop the marginalization of Muslim women."

Footage has gone viral of one hijab-wearing student being pursued by Hindu men shouting "Jai Shri Ram" (Hail Lord Ram) as she arrives at PES College in the city of Mandya, around 100 kilometers (around 60 miles) southeast of Bangalore.

Activists, as well as many from India's 200 million-member minority Muslim community, say hate crimes against Muslims have increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014.

jsi/sms (AFP, Reuters, dpa)

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism 

As more women forgo the hijab, Iran’s government pushes back

By NASSER KARIMI and JON GAMBRELL

yesterday

AND SHE IS SMOKING
A woman sits in the alfresco dining area of a cafe at Tajrish commercial district without wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023. 

More women are choosing not to wear the mandatory headscarf, or the hijab, publicly in Iran. Such open defiance of the law follows months of protests over the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country's morality police, for wearing her hijab too loosely.

(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Billboards across Iran’s capital proclaim that women should wear their mandatory headscarves to honor their mothers. But perhaps for the first time since the chaotic days following Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, more women — both young and old — choose not to do so.

Such open defiance comes after months of protests over the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police, for wearing her hijab too loosely. While the demonstrations appear to have cooled, the choice by some women not to cover their hair in public poses a new challenge to the country’s theocracy. The women’s pushback also lays bare schisms in Iran that had been veiled for decades.

Authorities have made legal threats and closed down some businesses serving women not wearing the hijab. Police and volunteers issue verbal warnings in subways, airports and other public places. Text messages have targeted drivers who had women without head covering in their vehicles.

 

A woman walks around Tajrish commercial district without wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023. 

  

A woman walks around Tajrish commercial district without wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023. 

Women talk as they walk around Tajrish commercial district without wearing their mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023.

However, analysts in Iran warn that the government could reignite dissent if it pushes too hard. The protests erupted at a difficult time for the Islamic Republic, currently struggling with economic woes brought on by its standoff with the West over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Some women said they’ve had enough — no matter the consequence. They say they are fighting for more freedom in Iran and a better future for their daughters.

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Some suggested the growing numbers of women joining their ranks might make it harder for the authorities to push back.

“Do they want to close down all businesses?” said Shervin, a 23-year-old student whose short, choppy hair swayed in the wind on a recent day in Tehran. “If I go to a police station, will they shut it down too?”

Still, they worry about risk. The women interviewed only provided their first names, for fear of repercussions.

Vida, 29, said a decision by her and two of her friends to no longer cover their hair in public is about more than headscarves.

“This is a message for the government, leave us alone,” she said.

A woman talks on her cellphone as she walks around Tajrish commercial district without wearing the mandatory Islamic headscarf in northern Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 29, 2023.

Iran and neighboring Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are the only countries where the hijab remains mandatory for women. Before protests erupted in September, it was rare to see women without headscarves, though some occasionally let their hijab fall to their shoulders. Today, it’s routine in some areas of Tehran to see women without headscarves.

For observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some — has long been a political symbol as well.

Iran’s ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1936 banned the hijab as part of his efforts to mirror the West. The ban ended five years later when his son, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, took over. Still, many middle and upper-class Iranian women chose not to wear the hijab.

By the 1979 Islamic Revolution, some of the women who helped overthrow the shah embraced the chador, a cloak that covers the body from head to toe, except for the face. Images of armed women encompassed in black cloth became a familiar sight for Americans during the U.S. Embassy takeover and hostage crisis later that year. But other women protested a decision by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordering the hijab to be worn in public. In 1983, it became the law, enforced with penalties including fines and two months in prison.

Forty years later, women in central and northern Tehran can be seen daily without headscarves. While at first Iran’s government avoided a direct confrontation over the issue, it has increasingly flexed the powers of the state in recent weeks in an attempt to curb the practice .

In early April, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that “removing hijab is not Islamically or politically permissible.”

Khamenei claimed women refusing to wear the hijab are being manipulated. “They are unaware of who is behind this policy of removing and fighting hijab,” Khamenei said. “The enemy’s spies and the enemy’s spy agencies are pursuing this matter. If they know about this, they will definitely not take part in this.”

Hard-line media began publishing details of “immoral” situations in shopping malls, showing women without the hijab. On April 25, authorities closed the 23-story Opal shopping mall in northern Tehran for several days after women with their hair showing were seen spending time together with men in a bowling alley.

“It is a collective punishment,” said Nodding Kasra, a 32-year-old salesman at a clothing shop in the mall. “They closed a mall with hundreds of workers over some customers’ hair?”

Police have shut down over 2,000 businesses across the country over admitting women not wearing the hijab, including shops, restaurants and even pharmacies, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh.

“This is a lose-lose game for businesses. If they warn (women) about not wearing the hijab as per the authorities’ orders, people will boycott them,” said Mohsen Jalalpour, a former deputy head of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce. “If they refuse to comply, the government will close them down.”

Bijan Ashtari, who writes on Iranian politics, warned that business owners who had remained silent during the Mahsa Amini-inspired protests could now rise up.

Meanwhile, government offices no longer provide services to women not covering their hair, after some had in recent months. The head of the country’s track and field federation, Hashem Siami, resigned this weekend after some participants in an all-women half-marathon in the city of Shiraz competed without the hijab.

There are signs the crackdown could escalate.

Some clerics have urged deploying soldiers, as well as the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, to enforce the hijab law. The Guard on Monday reportedly seized an Iranian fishing boat for carrying women not wearing the hijab near Hormuz Island, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Police also say that surveillance cameras with “artificial intelligence” will find women not wearing their head covering. A slick video shared by Iranian media suggested that surveillance footage would be matched against ID photographs, though it’s unclear if such a system is currently operational .

“The fight over the hijab will remain center stage unless the government reaches an understanding with world powers over the nuclear deal and sanctions relief,” said Tehran-based political analyst Ahmad Zeidabadi.

But diplomacy has been stalled and anti-government protests could widen, he said. The hijab “will be the main issue and the fight will not be about scarves only.”

Sorayya, 33, said she is already fighting for a broader goal by going without the headscarf.

“I don’t want my daughter to be under the same ideologic pressures that I and my generation lived through,” she said, while dropping off her 7-year-old daughter at a primary school in central Tehran. “This is for a better future for my daughter.”

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s Mahsa Amini hijab protests a lesson for Indonesia against radical Islam, activists say

Resty Woro Yuniar - Yesterday 

Outrage over Iran's hijab laws after a woman's death have sparked fears Indonesia could face a similar fate amid a rise in religious fundamentalism
Analysts say especially concerning is the growing grip of Wahhabism, which promotes a narrow view of Islam, across Indonesian institutions and regions

The spiralling unrest in Iran over a young woman's death is a cautionary tale for Indonesia, say rights activists in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, where women face hundreds of systemic rules making headscarves obligatory.

At least 40 demonstrators have reportedly been killed across Iran after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested in Tehran by so-called morality officers for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, the Muslim headscarf for women. She died in custody amid rumours she had been beaten to death.

Some women have burned their hijabs and cut their hair short as an act of defiance, as protests spread across the Middle East and as far as Europe and North America. In Indonesia, online commentators have expressed solidarity with Iranian women, while also warning the Southeast Asian nation could face the same fate if religious fundamentalists are not reined in.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Will West Sumatra's new law lead to more Islamic conservatism in Indonesia?

"I think all regulations that make the hijab mandatory in Indonesia must be revoked, if we don't want to copy the mistakes of the Iranian government, as well as the Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan governments," said Andreas Harsono, a Jakarta-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.

"Women are free to wear the hijab; we don't need to enforce it. Women who don't wear the hijab should be afforded the same respect as those who wear it. It's an individual choice," added Harsono, who has studied hijab rules in Indonesia extensively.

While Muslim women in Indonesia are obliged to wear the religious headscarf in various places and on occasions, the phenomenon was relatively recent, he noted.

The first time Indonesia passed a regional-level law mandating the hijab was in 2001, three years after a people-led revolution toppled Suharto.

The dictator took steps to repress Islam during the initial parts of his 32-year regime because he viewed the religion as a threat to national unity. He went as far as banning hijabs in secular state schools in 1982, "as a response to the 1979 revolution in Iran that made hijab mandatory for women there", Harsono said.

As Iran's anti-hijab protests escalate, diaspora reflects on 'terrible memories'

The Iranian revolution had led to the ousting of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who sought to replace Islamic laws and norms with Western ones, including banning traditional Muslim attire.

As opposition towards Suharto's policies grew however, he made a U-turn in the 1990s, courting large Muslim groups and approving the establishment of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals. In 1991, he also allowed students to wear the hijab at schools. The Suharto family also went to Mecca to carry out the haj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage, while his eldest daughter began donning a headscarf from 1989.



Women in Jakarta, Indonesia, queue to receive Covid-19 vaccine shots in 2021. Photo: Reuters© Provided by South China Morning Post

The attempts to repress Islam in Iran and Indonesia often lead to comparisons of how hijab-wearing has evolved in the two states.

"There are some parallels between Indonesia and Iran in this respect. If you compare the regimes of the Shah and Suharto, they were repressing Islam and Islamic identity," said Julia Suryakusuma, director of the Gender and Democracy Center at the Jakarta-based Institute for Research, Education and Information on Economy and Social Affairs.

"When the people were fighting against the Shah, non-conservative women were wearing the hijab just as a symbol of protest," she said. "Under Suharto, the military regime was smarter because they befriended political Islam. The Suharto regime gave signs it was friendly towards Islam."

But even as Indonesia continued being mostly secular before the turn of the 21st century, Islamic fundamentalism started emerging in the 1980s due to the spread of Saudi-funded religious schools, which teach Wahhabism in their curriculum, Suryakusuma said.

Wahhabism is a puritanical movement that promotes a narrow view of Islam, including that women must wear the hijab.



Thousands of schools in Indonesia make it compulsory for female students, even those who are not Muslim, to wear a headscarf. File photo: AFP© Provided by South China Morning Post

Today, 24 out of Indonesia's 34 provinces have hijab mandates at schools, government institutions, or public places, Harsono said. He estimated around 135,000 schools in these provinces require their female students to wear hijab, whether they are Muslim or not.

There are also 64 government regulations, with two on the national level, that make hijabs compulsory for students and civil servants. Those who do not comply could face expulsion or dismissal, he said.

Women who do not wear hijabs are also often harassed or bullied into submission, activists have noted.

"The enforcement to wear the hijab in Indonesia occurs in closed spaces, in the form of symbolic violence within the family or office. Women who are not veiled are bullied so that they will soon wear the veil," says Kalis Mardiasih, a female Muslim writer and activist of diversity and gender equality in Islam.

Indonesian women face bullying for not wearing hijabs: rights group

Nevertheless, activists believe that any resistance to hijab rules in Indonesia is unlikely to blow up into nationwide protests such as those in Iran, as the state encourages the empowerment and participation of women in many sectors, including politics.

Save for the ultraconservative Aceh province, Indonesia also does not have any state-sanctioned morality police departments to enforce hijab rules.

However, the increasing grip of Wahhabism among the country's Muslims opens grounds for concern as more institutions and regions become more conservative, Suryakusuma said.

"In Indonesia, we have had Wahhabism for quite a while and it's quite worrying because it has managed to infiltrate universities, schools, and the military," she said.

"Indonesia is not like Iran. But extremist Islam threatens the sovereignty of the state, as the radicals don't necessarily believe in the law of the state. That's why we should pay attention to what is happening in Iran, because it could happen here."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.

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