Prosecutors in southern Siberia have demanded that high school girls in a remote mountain village give up Muslim headscarves in classes to avoid violating a new nationwide secular dress code.
A check found some hijab-wearing students in a school in the Kosh-Agachsky district of Russia’s Altai Republic, local prosecutors said on their website Friday.
The government of Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan has permitted wearing headscarves in schools, a spokesman for Dagestan’s education ministry said on Monday.
“On an instruction from Dagestan’s acting leader Ramazan Abdulatipov, designers of Dagestan have drafted school uniform outfits,” the spokesman said. “They are in line with the national school uniform requirements. The only element of [Dagestan] folk clothes is a thin headscarf.”
The spokesman said these school uniform designs were optional, and it was up to schools to decide on whether to follow the recommendations.
Police have now stepped in to investigate allegations of racism [see here and here] against three newly-elected UKIP politicians on Lincolnshire County Council.
Officers will probe claims of racist Facebook rants by leader Chris Pain [pictured] and two colleagues. The authority referred the case to police following “several” complaints from members of the public. All three councillors deny making the comments and say their accounts were hacked.
Parents whose children are not allowed to wear Muslim headscarves to school in a southern Russian region have appealed to the Supreme Court, defense lawyer Murad Musayev told RIA Novosti on Monday.
The Krasnoyarsk State Medical University has canceled a rule prohibiting students from wearing religious clothing in class, such as traditional Muslim headscarves, the regional prosecutor’s office reported on Wednesday.
The prosecutors demanded that the rule be annulled, claiming that it conflicts with the education law.
The attention of prosecutors was brought to the issue earlier when a female student was expelled in March for wearing a hijab. A Dagestani native, she violated the university dress code by wearing a traditional Muslim headdress.
A widely circulated email claims that, in a speech to the Duma on 14 February, Vladimir Putin bluntly advised Russian minorities that they should speak Russian and adapt to Russian culture if they wish to live in the country and that, if they prefer sharia law, they should go and live somewhere else.
Did Putin make such a speech? Hoax-Slayer thinks not.
Prosecutors in Russia’s Siberian region said Wednesday that a local university’s expulsion of a female student for wearing a hijab was unlawful.
Senior regional prosecutor’s aide Yelena Pimonenko told RIA Novosti that it was contrary to the Russian law on education to ban students from wearing items of clothing that reflect their faith. The university’s administration has ten days to appeal the ruling.
Russian prosecutors said Monday they are looking into the alleged expulsion of a female student from a Siberian university over her hijab.
Last week, a local TV station in the city of Krasnoyarsk reported that an unnamed third-year student from Muslim-populated Dagestan had been expelled from the city’s medical school for wearing a headscarf.
The Stavropol Territorial Court has rejected a lawsuit against the ban on wearing headdresses to school, including the hijab, a Moscow lawyer said on Friday.
Lawyer Murad Musayev filed the lawsuit on behalf of the region’s Muslim people, who seek to annul the new school uniform requirements introduced last September.
“The court has rejected our lawsuit,” he said. “I believe this ruling was politically motivated. We will find out why the court ruled against our lawsuit in five days when they send the hearing documents to us.” He added that he plans to appeal the decision.
A recent ban on the wearing of hijab in Russia’s southern region of Stavropol is squeezing the Muslim population in the area, forcing many to send their daughters to neighboring districts to be able to wear the outfit or give them home schooling.