TIRANA/LONDON, 19 October 2006 — A Muslim student has been banned from wearing an Islamic head scarf to university in Albania after she attended a lecture wearing one, the university said yesterday.
Agim Kukeli, the dean of Aleksander Moisiu University had previously told Behije Hoxha not to come to the school wearing a Muslim veil, Education Ministry spokeswoman Ermelinda Muho said.
“Students must respect the rules of Albanian schooling, which in Albania are secular,” said Agim Kukeli, the vice-chancellor of the University of Durres on the country’s west coast.
“We advised the young student not to wear the scarf during university lessons (but) she is free to do what she wants outside the building complex,” he said.
“In Albania, there are Qur’anic schools where everyone is free to enroll, but there are also public schools where the rules must be respected,” he said.
Hoxha, 19, had attended a Qur’anic school before enrolling at the University of Durres in early October in order to continue her studies in English, said the official.
A Muslim leader in the Albanian capital Tirana, Saimir Rusheku, criticized the decision. “Nobody has the right to impose on others the way they dress. The choice is personal,” said Rusheku.
The ban on students wearing scarves to lessons was “discriminatory and a direct violation of human rights,” he added.
Selim Muca, a religious leader who leads the country’s Muslim community, said he considered the suspension a violation of the student’s human rights. Muca added, however, that he did not plan to lodge an official complaint with the government.
According to Muca, Hoxha had been an excellent student at a religious high school.
“What a student wears is a personal issue and suspending her participation in lectures is a violation of human rights,” Muca said.
Veil ‘Statement of Separation’: Poll
Three in five Britons believe that veils are a “visible statement of separation” but nearly 80 percent say Muslim women have the right to wear them, according to a poll yesterday.
Over a third — 38 percent — of respondents said they thought teachers should be allowed to wear a veil, compared with 60 percent who think that children at British schools should be allowed to wear Islamic dress, including headscarves.
The poll came after the suspension of teaching assistant Aishah Azmi, 24, from a junior school in Yorkshire, northern England, for refusing to remove her veil.
The debate was triggered 10 days ago when former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he asked Muslim women at his constituency surgery to remove theirs, adding he would rather they did not wear them at all. Prime Minister Tony Blair, at his monthly press conference Tuesday, also called for a debate on the integration of Muslims in Britain but said that veils should not be banned outright.
“It is a mark of separation and that’s why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable,” he told reporters. The position of Islam in society has dominated political debate in Britain since a series of suicide bomb attacks on London’s transport system last July which killed 52 travelers and four British Muslim suicide bombers.
The survey, conducted by Ipsos MORI for television channel ITV, questioned 1,023 people aged over 18 between Oct. 8 and 11.
