Hijab is banned in photographs used in Azeri official documents

By Damir Ahmad, IOL Correspondent

BAKU, April 30 (IslamOnline.net) – The Islamic Party in Azerbaijan appealed to President Ilham Aliyev to allow Muslim women to wear hijab in photographs taken for official documents.

"We presented an urgent appeal to the President to that effect, as the female party members see the matter as part of preserving their personal freedom," Erada Goliefa, the party’s Women Committee chairman, said Thursday, April 29.

The Russian NTV said security officials have refused to issue passports and IDs to women photographed with their head covered, forcing the women and human rights groups to file lawsuits against the government.

Goliefa said that the wife of the country’s mufti and his daughter only are allowed to get ID photos with hijab.

"While the rest of Muslim women are not permitted to do so," she lamented.

The government has recently approved a personal freedom law, which allows any Muslim woman to choose the form of their photographs attached to official documents.

Goliefa hoped the move should go further for hijab to appear in these photographs, which dissuaded 2000 Muslim women from casting ballots in the recent 2003 Presidential elections as they have no IDs.

Islam deems hijab a religious obligation which has nothing to do with portraying any political affiliation.

Goliefa called on the government to leave Muslim women meet this obligation.

Permanent Suffering

The hijab is a nagging issue for Muslim women in the former Soviet Union republic.

"It causes several problems for women here while they try to get permits for hajj and Umrah," Goliefa complained.

University officials have warned students against wearing the gear in campus – much to the consternation of Muslim females who considered dropping out.

Female students at three schools in Baku, the medical institute, the pedagogical institute and Baku State University, had said that their lecturers ordered them to remove the hijab.

Chequered Record

Azerbaijan has a remarkably chequered record on religious freedoms.

The government is frequently accused of violating religious freedoms in its desire to shore up the country's secular principles.

In 2002, over a hundred Muslim women have applied for political asylum in German and French Embassies in protest at the law banning them from wearing hijab in their passport photographs.

The women then said that the move is an affront to their honor and dignity.

The government had also imposed on the same year compulsory registration of religious groups, in a move considered as a new bid to clamp down on minority faiths.

Earlier in January, Azeri security forces detained four Islamic activists on suspicion of attempting to cross the border into Chechnya to join independence-seekers fighting Russian forces.

Nearly 93.4 % of the population in Azerbaijan is Muslim, nearly 2.5 % are Russian Orthodox, 2.3 % Armenian Orthodox and the other sects have 1.8% adherents.