Salad of ignorance and bias is poison
The editorial opinion of the Nation newspaper of Thursday June 16, 2016 was clearly a disaster. It was a bad salad of ignorance and pure bias which could thoroughly upset the polity if left unchallenged.
The arguments of the Nation’s editorial are -that Law operates in the context of societal reality- Muslims in professing their faith through hijab are potential terrorists- Christians can cherry pick judicial pronouncements to obey at will- Judgment and justice ought to be sentimental and self-serving- Erroneous references on the propriety of hijab usage, its definition and essence, and- Who owns the schools?
Without a doubt every society develops laws in line with its mores and values, so is it in the State of Osun. The laws passed on by the colonial authorities were clearly partisan in some instances. It is clearly hypocritical to ignore this fact. It is very easy to disregard this fact if you are not a victim. The Muslims who suffered oppression throughout the period of colonization cannot continue to so do in their own country. Let us cite some examples; it is acceptable to dress like an English person in all forms but unacceptable to dress like a Yoruba in most official circumstances. Marriages contracted in the churches are legal and justiciable but Islamic marriages are customary and non-justiciable. Hats, berets and scarfs are good accessories to dresses but the mandatory hijab for female Muslims is despised, derided and unacceptable. Christian fellowships are normal in work places but it is a sacrilege for Muslims to observe collective prayers at work places, the list is endless. How can this obvious discrimination against a segment of our population be explained in a republic? Whatever answer we have, one clear message is that it cannot continue unchallenged. The laws therefore must be adjusted to reflect this reality, because Muslims are citizens with rights in our republic.
Muslims are terrorists; this is outrageous coming from an apparently responsible newspaper. We demand an immediate apology from The Nation. The editorial operators simply demonstrated mental-psyche of Donald Trump, the eccentric presidential candidate of the GOP of USA. Because some criminals use Islam to terrorize society does that qualify anyone to profile all Muslims as terrorists? The editorial could have come from the Crusaders of medieval Europe, NAZI of Germany, The Lord Resistance Army of Uganda and the Ku Klux Klan of the USA. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of all decent people. An isolated case of France cannot be cited as leverage to derogatory people that use Hijab. Franco Frattini <https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Franco_Frattini> of European Commission <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ European_Commission> recently said that the commission frowned at prohibition of Islamic dress particularly hijab and burqa. Even, the USA has no ban on veils. If the Nation does not withdraw this damaging profiling of Muslims, I recommend strongly that organized Muslim groups should take appropriate legal action against the newspaper for defamation and character assassination.
Uniforms are uniforms and must therefore not be distorted with any accessory.
This is laughable but very cheap and escapist. Hijab does not distort the uniform. I will come to define the hijab later. On the erroneous claim that hijab distorts the principle of uniform as claimed in the editorial, with copious references to professions, nothing can be more dubious. Do police women wear hijabs? Yes, they do! If the piece was not hurriedly concocted, those behind the shoddy editorial should have knew countries like Sweden, Pakistan, US, Scotland, UK, etc allows use of hijab on uniform. And if I may ask, what codes in particular do judges subscribe to? In the first instance hijab is an accessory like tie, hat, cap, beret, socks, belt, muffler, pendants, scarfs, headgear, etc. if a tie, an hat, a beret, a belt, a muffler, etc are good compliments to dresses and uniforms, it is false and irrational to isolate hijab as an unwholesome accessory. If we are to accept this irrationality, the next question to ask is why? Islam!
What is the hijab? Hijab is the head cover if you like scarf, that female Muslims are mandated to use for covering their head, neck and chest/cleavages by Allah SWT in the Holy Quran, which is a noticeable sign of their faith, a symbol of modesty and dignity. It is not the burqa. The burqa is the overall garment worn over dresses by some Muslim women. No Muslim has ever demanded for the use of burqa in schools. It is simply mischievous to mix this up. In the northern part of Nigeria, scarfs are used in the primary schools while hijab that covers the upper part of the female anatomy is used in the secondary schools. The motive is simply to give hijab a bad name for its rejection. Nuns, lawyers wigs, judges wigs and gowns, Sihks turbans, Jews hats and sculls caps, etc are not discriminated upon and despised.