Time to punish anti-Hijab warriors

The recent events at IS school are disheartening indeed. Not just because in Ibadan, with a significant, if not majority Muslim population the issue of hijab should not meet with such opposition, but because the whole thing is orchestrated and unnecessary.

But while we are trying to come to terms with this provocative and potentially explosive situation, the news of the persecution of a young student of Army Cantonment Girls Secondary School Ojo, in Lagos broke.

According to Hijab Rights Advocacy Initiative, 13-year-old Khadeejah Adewunmi Ajayi was harrassed and maltreated by her teachers for wearing a hijab, just a few days after the Lagos state government had approved the use of hijab in schools in the state.

In the November 15th edition of Daily Trust, I read that Khadeejah was on her way home after school had closed when some teachers accosted her and commanded her to remover her head cover.

‘She was ordered to remove her hijab. Upon fervent pleas that she could not remove it, the teachers forcefully snatched her hijab and her school bag away from her, handed them over to a military security officer at a nearby security post, while the poor girl-child wept for her bag, as she had assignments to write and submit the following day.’ The news report says.

The Hijab Advocacy group therefore gave the Lagos state government seven days to investigate this incident and show if it’s really serious about maintaining a state where the rights of all citizens are protected.

Almost a year ago, we heard about the equally humiliating maltreatment of Barrister Aisha Zubair, at the hands of her lecturers at the Abuja Law School, for sneaking and using her hijab at her call to bar ceremony.  Despite Aisha’s persecution, the very next day, her friend and course mate insisted on using hers, and Firdausi Amasa’s courageous stance caused a chain of events that changed the course of history.

However the fact that those law school lecturers had gone scot free after insulting Aisha, removing her hijab and matching on it, confiscating her law school certificate and generally demoralising her, has emboldened others to do the same.

If any action had been taken against Aisha’s persecutors, then little Khadeejah would not have suffered her fate at Ojo military secondary school.

These anti-hijab warriors will go to any lengths to maltreat our daughters, it isn’t right that they should remain unpunished. The lecturers at Abuja Law School are well known, their names and positions equally known but they got away with their wickedness because there was no will to punish them.

But punishing them is a decision that must be made and upheld. The hijab is obligatory on all female Muslims who have attained puberty. And the Nigerian constitution guarantees our right to freedom of religion. if a few bigoted non-muslims insist on denying us this right, and even go as far as to persecute us for insisting on it, surely it is foolhardy to stand by and look.

The opposition to hijab use in some parts of this country, and in certain institutions is only borne out of a hatred for Muslims and Islamic principles, not out of love for any other religion or culture. For indeed the Hijab is there in Christianity. No Christian, the world over, can say that he had ever seen a photo of the virgin Mary without her hijab. So where is the anti-hijab sentiment coming from when the mother of their lord and saviour is the most globally recognised hijab-wearer in history?

Additionally, as I’d observed several times on this page, all advanced countries of the world have accepted the Muslim woman’s right to cover her head. And these are the people our anti-hijab warriors look up to for modernity and secularism. So if these people accept that a piece of cloth on a female’s head hurts no one, why should our bigoted, educated-illiterates insist that hijab is a problem to them?

It’s really time we insist that all Nigerian females desirous of covering their heads, in any situation, be allowed to do so without let or hindrance.

It is our inalienable right. And the first step towards getting this right is to make sure the teachers at military school Ojo and the lecturers at Nigerian Law School Abuja are prosecuted and punished for their harassment and molestation of young Khadeejah and Barrister Aisha respectively.