To wear or not to wear, that’s the explosive question exercising the minds of local authorities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region where female students wearing the Muslim veil are still excluded from school, despite the suspension of a controversial hijab ban.
The niqab is a full face veil worn by mainly Muslim women and girls in Ethiopia, a country known in Islamic folklore as Abyssinia where the first adherents of the faith sought refuge when they faced persecution with Prophet Mohammed.
Today Ethiopia can boast of a Muslim population of over 30 million adherents, constituting the second largest religious group at 31 percent behind Orthodox Christians at 67 percent. But in recent years, many Muslims have complained of discrimination at local level.
The row over wearing the full face hijab in some schools which rumbles on is bringing this to the fore.
A recently formed coalition of civil society organisations claim a supposed indecisiveness and lack of courage by the local authorities to resolve the dispute.
It would be 100 days since 159 female students in Axum town were barred from classes for wearing the hijab to school, triggering accusations of open discrimination against the Muslim community whose members say their way of life is non-negotiable.
”We take our religion and way of life everywhere we go even in schools and the authorities have to respect this” said a visibly frustrated anonymous Muslim parent to one of the girls banned from classes.
The six organisations making up the coalition campaigning to lift the ban say the exclusion of female Muslim students over their dress code is causing more harm than good to the overall well-being of the society.
The organisations namely Yehono, Gorzo, Rise and Shine, Hewyet, Umbrella for the Needy, and Nolawi have demanded urgent action to restore the affected students to school based.
They demand more bite from an earlier decisions by the Tigray Regional Education Bureau and Axum district court suspending the hijab ban and allowing the students back to class.
They warned that the prolonged ban is causing “social and psychological harm” to the students who have missed learning opportunities and suffer from the psychological distress caused by discrimination and isolation.
The organisations called for the immediate lifting of the ban, accountability for school officials involved, and compensation for the students’ lost educational time.
Last month, thousands of Muslim students and residents took to the streets of Mekelle the capital of Tigray state to protest the hijab ban, which they said, violated their constitutional rights to education and religious freedom and demanded school regulations that are non-discriminatory.
The protest was spearheaded by the Tigray Islamic Affairs Supreme Council which has been campaigning against the niqab ban.
”Despite clear rulings from the courts and directives from the education bureau, our daughters are still being denied access to education” says head of the council Sheikh Adam Abdulkadir during the protest.
His council had said the ban had disproportionately impacted Grade 12 students who missed a deadline for online registration for the national examination because schools required them to remove their hijabs bfore they could register.
The Axum District Court suspended the school directive banning the hijab, labeling it “irreversible rights violations” but this did not end the application of the ban.
The legal action follows an earlier warning from the Tigray Islamic Affairs Supreme Council, which announced it would take “further peaceful measures in consultation with believers” if the issue was not resolved within days.
In a joint statement the coalition says legal rulings without implementation are meaningless if the students are still not allowed to wear the veil and attended classes.
”We cannot remain silent while hundreds of female students are being denied their right to education,” the group adds.
Local and federal authorities have not responded.
In January the district court summoned five schools in Axum to respond to accusations that they have barred Muslim students from attending classes while wearing hijabs.
In its preliminary ruling, the court suspended the directive prohibiting female Muslim students from wearing hijabs in schools.
MG/as/APA