Chiraq bans Muslim head scarves in State Schools

Headscarf Dilemma Puzzles Bulgaria
Balkan Insight, 31 Aug 06

Bulgaria has become caught up in the European row over Islamic dress, after a university said it considered recruiting big number of Turkish students who want to study while wearing veils.

The Medical Academy in Plovdiv said it was weighing a request to grant places to 110 women from Turkey who want to attend lectures on condition they can wear veils.

Under Turkey's secular laws, civil servants, teachers and pupils are forbidden from covering their heads in public in accordance with Islamic religious tradition. More than 200 religious Turkish women recently opted to pursue university education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While the academy in Plovdiv can expect an extra 440,000 euro per year from these fee-paying students, the request has generated a local controversy about secularism - and about the country's image on the eve of expected EU membership.

Previously, only a handful of cases concerning Islamic dress have hit Bulgaria, where a sizeable Muslim community is not known for militancy.

Now, experts are calling for legislation to prevent ad-hoc, hasty decisions on such a sensitive matter.

"In a country where church and state are separated, it is improper to allow the wearing of religious clothes or symbols at schools and universities," said Georgi Manolov, professor at Plovdiv's Economy and Administration College.

Michail Ekimdzhiev, chairman of the Association for European Integration and Human Rights, a local NGO, said: "On the one hand, the right of religious self-determination, stipulated in the constitution and in the European Convention on Human Rights, envisages the right to wear specific clothing and symbols. But on the other hand, many European state universities forbid wearing religious symbols."

The situation is blurred by the need of cash-strapped colleges to attract foreign, fee-paying, students.

Education minister Daniel Vulchev told local media on Wednesday that his institution will seek legislature changes to ban any kind of religious symbols in schools and universities.

But if supported by other state institutions, his choice to follow French rather than UK policy on the matter, has good chance to antagonise the moderate centuries-old Muslim community.

Thats a little different from a young girl demanding to wear overtly religious clothing whilst receiving an education at state expense.

If there is a dress code at school

It seems to me some militants want to make it a point of conflict to gain a "victory" over the secular French state.

Isnt that what happens in places like Saudi Arabia?

Steve 41oo wrote:

Isnt that what happens in places like Saudi Arabia?

Do you think that European Muslims would want to live like in Saudi Arabia? Even just those that wear headscarves? I dont believe it for a second. There's plenty of girls in Holland that want to wear a headscarf, but would be pretty outraged if they were told that they werent, for example, allowed to go outside without a male chaperone, or to drive a car, or etc.

I'm sure there are Muslims who'd rather see all women dress according to their sense of propriety, but I have seen little if any evidence of Muslims trying "to impose Islamic dress codes on ALL women, muslim or not". In the most militant quarters there is street pressure on Muslim girls to dress according to what militants consider right (the group Ni Putes Ni Soumises has recounted how this happens in some French suburbs), but a drive to "impose" the headscarf etc on "ALL" women?

But isnt it a fact that European women, muslim or not have to be pretty careful about what they wear in public in Saudi? It just seems to me that we are tolerant of others and bend over backwards to ensure minority rights, but when its the other way around, and european women are a minority in a muslim country, the same tolerance is not extended to them.

It just seems to me that we are tolerant of others and bend over backwards to ensure minority rights, but when its the other way around, and european women are a minority in a muslim country, the same tolerance is not extended to them.

Well yes obviously European societies are more tolerant of religious difference than the Saudi society is. I'm glad and proud of that, myself.

or the viennese for that matter ...
the year was 1942 , i had been sent to live in vienna for a year .