No Hijabs for Now, Indian Court Tells Muslim Students

An Indian court has ruled that students in the southern state of Karnataka should stop wearing religious clothing in classrooms until a final verdict is reached on whether a school can ban hijabs.

Muslim student organizations reacted with disappointment to the Karnataka High Court's statement in Bangalore, the state capital, on Thursday night. One said the students were asked to "suspend their faith.”

A ban on the wearing of hijabs imposed by an all-girls school in the city of Udupi has become the focus of the battle for minority rights in India. In January,  parents of five students asked the court to overturn the ban, arguing that it violated girls' right to education and freedom to practice religion.

Last week, the Karnataka government issued a ban on the wearing of hijabs in schools. Karnataka's government is controlled by the Bharatiya Janata party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist. Karnataka Police Chief, who closed schools this week due to the unrest, said  9th and 10th grade students would return to class on Monday, and a decision would be made after that. 

A final court decision on a restraining order may be days or weeks away. “We think it is really unfair to ask Muslim women to suspend their faith,” said Fawaz Shaheen, national secretary of the Muslim Students Organization of India, a group based in Delhi. 

Conflict broke out in September at a preparatory institution for girls in Udupi, a town in southwestern Karnataka. When several Muslim schoolgirls showed up in hijabs, several teachers whose classes they were trying to attend turned them down and marked them absent for the day, according to the petition. In previous years, wearing a hijab at school was not  an issue, according to one of the petitioners.

The unrest has also spread to at least a dozen other schools. Officials ordered schools to close as the police couldn’t respond to intensified demonstrations.