5th February, 2018
PRESS RELEASE:
POSTPONED
PUBLIC HEARING:
CHANCE
TO TREAT HIJAB ISSUES GLOBALLY
The Committee on Judiciary and
Justice of the House of Representatives this morning announced the postponement
of the planned open hearing of the call to bar saga of Amasa Firdaus. The
latter was barred from entering the venue of the School of Law’s call to bar
ceremony on Wednesday, 13th December, 2017 on account of her
refusal to remove her hijab.
The tornado of hues and cries which
greeted the incident led the House of Representatives to direct its Committee
on Judiciary and Justice to institute investigations into the matter. The open
hearing was formerly scheduled for tomorrow 6th February, 2018
before the postponement.
Though
a little disappointed, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) is inclined to show
understanding for the reason given for the postponement, which was to afford
more time to reach all stakeholders.
We see an opportunity
in this postponement for a holistic x-ray of all issues surrounding the hijab
phenomenon in Nigeria as it affects the mass stigmatization of Muslim women.
With the additional time occasioned by this postponement, the investigations
and final decisions of the Committee of the honourable House should go beyond
justice for Amasa Firdaus. It must be comprehensive, touching all areas where
hijab-wearing Muslim women are being profiled and persecuted. Such an exercise
will go a long way in dousing tension and preventing hijab-related religious
crisis in this country.
Immigration officials
are known to engage in regular stereotyping of Muslims who apply for
international passports. They intimidate Muslim women particularly at the point
of taking pictures (or ‘capturing’). Hijab-wearing Muslim women are forced to
remove their hijabs or ordered to draw their hijab backwards to reveal their
ears. The same scenario plays itself out in driving licence, national identity
card offices and during registration for elections.
In the process, thousands of Muslim
women have been denied international passports, driving licences and national
identity cards while millions have been disenfranchised during elections. It is
a case of mass profiling of Muslims. We therefore appeal to the House of
Representatives as the voice of the voiceless and the bulwark against
oppression and persecution, to take the bull by the horn by criminalizing the
obstruction, denial and stigmatisation of female Muslim women in hijab while
carrying out their civic responsibilities like obtaining international
passport, driving licence, voters’ registration card, etc
By the same token,
Muslim women who work in uniformed bodies in Nigeria, e.g. the army, police,
traffic officials, uniformed voluntary groups, nurses, the National Youth
Service Corps (NYSC), students of primary and secondary schools, etc, use uniforms
designed by the Christian colonialists. These uniforms should have been
reviewed after independence because they only suit Christians. Muslim women are
uncomfortable in them. Some of them constitute breaches to Islamic dress code
and offend the sensibility of Muslim women who are compelled to wear the
uniforms regardless of their inner feeling of resentment.
In
summary, we demand a review of the code of dressing in the Nigerian Law
School as it affects the ‘manifestation’ of religious beliefs and a review of
the dress code in all professions and educational institutions where uniforms
are used such that female Muslims in such professions and institutions can use
suitable hijabs along with the uniforms. In addition, we also demand that the
House of Representatives declares illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional and
therefore judiciable any order or request by any Nigerian official that a
Muslim woman should remove her hijab.
Professor Ishaq
Akintola,
Director,
Muslim Rights Concern
(MURIC)
