Singapore Muslim Girl in Headscarf Row Moves to Australia
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| Singapore has
banned Muslim girls from wearing headscarves in its public
schools |
SINGAPORE,
July 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Singaporean Muslim girl
embroiled in a political controversy over a ban on wearing Islamic
headscarves in the island’s public schools has moved to Australia, a
relative said here Tuesday, July 30.
Six-year-old
Nurul Nasihah Nasser, who quit a public school after her parents
refused to comply with the ban, is now in Melbourne with her mother,
according to an aunt.
“I
just got off the phone with her mother this morning and she said
Nasihah is happy in the school where all her friends also wear the
tudung (headscarf),” the aunt told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by
telephone.
A
Singapore daily newspaper, Today, reported Tuesday that Nurul Nasihah
started studying last week at the King Khalid Islamic College in
Melbourne, and that the family had applied for permanent residency in
Australia.
“Her
education is important and so is religion,” her father Mohammed
Nasser told the daily. “But we cannot have one at the expense of the
other.”
Singapore’s
education ministry imposed the headscarf ban to allegedly promote
“racial harmony” in the majority ethnic Chinese nation with
significant Malay and Indian minorities. Muslim schoolgirls can wear
the headgear outside school premises.
Nurul
Nasihah was one of four schoolgirls whose families had defied the ban
in a rare show of open dissent in this strictly governed city-state.
The
girl’s transfer to Australia followed a similar move by a Muslim
activist, Mohammad Zulfikar Shariff, a government critic who
championed the right of Muslim girls to wear headscarves in campus.
Police
are investigating whether Zulfikar criminally defamed Senior Minister
Lee Kuan Yew, Muslim Affairs Minister Jaacob Ibrahim, and Ho Ching,
head of the state investment arm Temasek Holdings and wife of Deputy
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
If
found guilty he could face up to two years in jail. His family is now
in Malaysia and plans to join him in Australia.
Zulfikar
came to prominence earlier this year when he expressed sympathy for
suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and opposed
Singapore’s support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
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