Azeri elite demands to ban headscarves

11 December 2010

Elite of Azerbaijan has demanded a total ban on hijab in the country.

Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture, Nizami Jafarov, said he supports a ban of the hijabs in educational institutions:

"Hijab wearing must be totally forbidden at secondary schools. Girls have not been well-formed to have any religious ideas. A school has its own rules".

"We are not to become independent to wrapping up in a yashmak. The society has to struggle against such cases", said Secretary General of the Union of Azerbaijani Writers Rashad Majid.

According to him, he is against any woman wearing a headscarf:

"If someone wears hijab in private, at home, we have no right to oppose to it. However, Azerbaijan is a secular state. Parents' demand to girls to cover their heads is a provocation against Azerbaijan. It's like opposing the Constitution. Azerbaijani intelligentsia fought for freeing people from bigotry for years".

Chairman of the United Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, MP Gudrat Hasanguliyev, noted that hijab contradicts to the "Constitution": Hijab are religious clothes and attributes. So, the law forbids its existence at educational institutions. Unfortunately, the majority was in due time against adopting an article in the Constitution that openly bans the hijab".

Hasanguliyev also stressed, he supported the position of the Ministry of Education in this matter.

A professor at Baku State University, political analyst Rustam Mammadov noted that the attitude towards Islam changed after the collapse of the USSR, and due to that, women started to wear hijab: "I see an increase in hijab wearing girls in classrooms each year. It confuses our with Europeanized society. Propaganda of religious ideology will lead to serious conflicts".

Kavkaz Center

Source: Kavkaz Center.
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/12/11/13120.shtml.