NIGERIA REVOKES BAN ON HIJAB IN SCHOOL

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian girls have the right to wear the hijab headscarf to school, an appeals court has ruled in a country where suicide bombers have abused Islamic dress to hide their deadly weapons.

The ruling by the Lagos division of Nigeria's Court of Appeal "has restored hope in the judiciary as the last hope of the common man," said the director of the Muslim Rights Concern group, Ishaq Akintola.

The unanimous decision, overturning a 2013 ruling which banned hijabs in Lagos government schools, has added authority since three of the five judges are not Muslim, Akintola said.

The headscarf issue has ignited passions in a country suffering from Boko Haram's Islamic uprising in the northeast. Some suicide bombers, including men disguised as women wearing full hijab, have hidden explosives under their robes.

Africa's most populous nation of about 170 million people is almost equally divided between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.

Thursday's ruling came in response to an appeal against a Lagos state ban, which had argued that hijabs are not part of the approved school uniform.

The hijab controversy has been most heated in the mainly Christian, southwestern Osun state. The High Court there ruled last month that any harassment of girls wearing the hijab constituted an infringement of their rights.

The local branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria had accused Osun state Gov. Rauf Aregbesola, a Muslim, of supporting the hijab as part of an "Islamization" agenda. Earlier this year, it ordered Christian students to wear choir robes to school, but only a handful of students complied.

Secretary-General Ishaq Oloyede of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria has suggested the controversy is a campaign by Christian extremists to force Muslim girls into an unacceptable choice between schooling and Islam.

Comments

The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...

The Historical Future of Trans Literature

Whatever happens against custom we say is against Nature, yet there is nothing whatsoever which is not in harmony with her. May Nature’s universal reason chase away that deluded ecstatic amazement which novelty brings to us. —Michel de Montaigne If you were trying to get anywhere in the late thirteenth century, the Hereford Mappa Mundi would not have been particularly helpful; the map is rife with topographical omissions, compressions, and errors—the most egregious of which is perhaps the mislabeling of Africa as Europe and vice-versa. Of course, as any medievalist will tell you, mappa mundi were not intended for cartographic accuracy anyway. Rather, they were pictorial histories, encyclopedias of the world’s mythological and theological narratives, records of medical fact and fable. Notable places—Carthage, Rome, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Jericho—appeared, but their placement on the map emphasized their symbolic import, rather than their geographical specificity. Thus, ...

DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH BY PMB; MAY 29 2016

www.naijaloaded.com My compatriots, It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress. We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous. The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security co...

TOBI'S DESK

Search This Blog