Time to Uncover and End the Bias against Head Covering
Controversies about using hijab in schools seem to have become recurring, untreatable sicknesses in the southwest. In 2013, it was the case of two Muslims girls who went to the High Court to challenge hijab ban in Lagos and lose. In 2016, junior and senior secondary school students in Osun State wore Christian and animist robes to school to practically argue that if the use of hijab must be allowed in school on religious grounds, then the use of other religious gear in school environments must be allowed too. In 2017, the Lagos-based Nigerian Law School contributed to the controversies and drew uncommon backlash by denying Amasa Firdaus her call to the bar because she refused to take off her hijab. In 2020, the controversy sparked in Ogun State when (in a case involving an 11-year old Muslim girl) a High Court judge ruled that the use of hijab is considered a fundamental human right only for adults.
A 2021 case has now been added to the uninspiring record: Last week, Kwara State Government closed 10 Christian public schools indefinitely because the schools forbade their Muslim students to use hijab. These schools didn’t give any intelligently convincing reasons why they banned hijab, other than the fact that it’s against their rules and regulations. Even if they wanted to provide intelligently convincing reasons why the ban was necessary, there isn’t any they could have brought up.
From scriptural and doctrinal vantage points, wearing a hijab doesn’t contradict any Christian teaching or biblical standard, and it isn’t any form of attack to the strength of the faith of Christian students in the schools. From a legal vantage point, there is no valid case against the use of hijab in schools or any other place that maintains strict official rules. Section 38(1) of the constitution makes provision for Nigerians to manifest and propagate their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
Another point worthy of note is: there are just two main, genuine reasons why junior and senior secondary schools ban some type of clothing: (1) when the clothing isn’t decent; and (2) when it doesn’t fit or is different from the color and style of the prescribed school uniform and gear. The hijab is a gear that promotes decency and its color or style can be made to fit any school uniform, so the schools’ reasons wouldn’t have legs to stand on even if they were undergirded with claims about decency and acceptable school dress codes.
Since this is a matter on head covering, it isn’t incongruous to compare hijabs to berets. Berets and hijabs are both head coverings, but the use of berets in schools doesn’t ignite fiery controversies (berets are even one of the well-cherished school uniform accessories) like the use of hijabs. In Deeper Life High School, ECWA Group of Schools, Akure, and other Christian schools around the country, female students are allowed to use a beret — it’s even an important uniform gear for female students in some schools.
Schools that ban the use of hijab often defend such decision on secular grounds by arguing that hijab is a religious gear. To make such argument is to not know that beret is also a type of religious gear. But, to some extent, it is. Islam doesn’t approve beret as the right head covering so it doesn’t get a wide usage among religious Female Muslims and it isn’t in any way linked to Islam, but Christian schools and churches that uphold what 1 Corinthians 11:5 and other similar verses say, religiously accept berets as head coverings — they don’t take it that females leave their heads uncovered if they use berets. We see now that berets can be identified with Christianity the same way hijabs are identified with Islam. Why
This undying hijab controversies that we see, from southwest Nigeria and Switzerland to France and America, are offshoots of globalized Islamophobia. Prejudice and bias are their real drivers, not standard and formal ethics. Perhaps, no place is the bias and prejudice more pronounced than in the West.
In the last 10 years, some Western countries have ramped up their campaigns for feminism-inspired policies in Africa. They call for gender equality and jettisoning of patriarchal schemes that deny women social and economic justice. Today, these countries are repeatedly making shameful headlines over hijab controversies. They fly thousands of miles to Africa to tell us why it’s important to dismantle patriarchal strongholds, but on their soil, they tell women what not to wear; they even legislate women’s choice of clothing. Perhaps, they don’t see that that is diametrically opposed to the gospel of women’s right that they preached vigorously in Africa.
Western Feminists like Mikki Kendall, Gloria Steinem, etc., who (among other things) are famous for consistently arguing that women should have the right to decide what to do with their body, are now suddenly silent as Muslim women in the West are denied the right to wear hijab. If women should have the right to decide what to do with their body, shouldn’t they also have the right to decide what to wear without any unfair, discomforting hindrance and controversy? Does Western feminism have a place for the rights of Muslim women at all?
Controversies about hijabs are controversies about women’s rights and choices. Whether in Lagos and Ogun or in America and Switzerland, women’s right must be respected and protected without double standards. Their choice must also be respected whether it’s religious or not. If it is not usually a matter of concern if a woman doesn’t cover her head, then it should also not be a matter of concern if a woman chose to cover her head.
As for the Kwara schools, it’s time they obeyed the government and reverse their decisions. Every school is expected to place a huge premium on the educational interests of students entrusted to it, and its decisions and policies should reflect that expectation. But the decisions of those schools have no direct, positive benefits for their students. The students have nothing to gain from the schools’ obstinate position on the hijab dispute. And if they have nothing to gain, they should have nothing to lose. Unfortunately, the indefinite closure of those schools would count as a loss for the students if the matter is dragged out for too long — they will lag behind students in other states in their curriculum plan.
These recurring, bias-motivated hijab controversies that are silently changing the tolerance identity of southwest have to come to an end quickly. The southwest has always been envied and praised in other parts of the country for its peacefully tolerant religious heterogeneity in a country torn asunder by chronic religious and ethnic intolerance. The southwest must not now stop being that beacon of hope that reminds Nigerians that religious differences don’t alienate unity, tolerance and love.
