OAU’s niqab rule is Islamophobia

It has earned the unenviable reputation of holding out as anti-Muslims. A short while ago, it was brought to our notice the ban on the wearing of the face veil by Muslims. This had been enforced with maximal intimidation and force, using threats, arrests and detentions, reminders of the dark days of the military. Agents […]

It has earned the unenviable reputation of holding out as anti-Muslims. A short while ago, it was brought to our notice the ban on the wearing of the face veil by Muslims. This had been enforced with maximal intimidation and force, using threats, arrests and detentions, reminders of the dark days of the military. Agents of the school went to press and claimed that the obnoxious ban was for security reasons. Silly as the argument sounds, little did they realize that they were alluding to our claim that this is classic Islamophobia.
Some unfortunate 5th columnists also whipped up another disastrously laughable argument that the ban was only on the face veil (niqab) and not the obvious signs of Muslim identity. OAU would step up its creative niche of Islamophobia a few weeks back when Muslim ladies were prevented from writing examinations in the nursing department. The reason was that they missed a practical class during the semester. The lecturer in charge went on to record this single miss as haven failed to make the required 75% attendance of lectures. We thought such fraudulent mathematics only belonged to our corrupt politicians! The story behind this is that there was a practical lesson class rescheduled for the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, Ile Ife as the OAU Teaching Hospitals Complex staffs were on strike then. The missionary hospital acted true to type by insisting that the Muslim ladies in headscarves remove their headscarves. The ladies insisted on keeping it on and were subsequently thrown out of the class. The story goes on till the bad mathematics of the Nursing department officials ensured that they didn’t write the examination.
Nothing could have emboldened these people if not the envisaged tacit approval of the higher authorities. How public officials decide to denigrate someone else’s faith while thinking they are furthering theirs is beyond me. Obviously, these educators have not been well educated themselves.  This should not in any way be seen as an isolated case as many such occurrences have been recorded. OAU could go on priding itself as celebrating the advancement of academic excellence or whatever, for all I care, its deviation from the moral standards expected of an institution of higher learning is rather unbecoming. While universities all around are deploying new means to harness the symbolic town and gown relationship, OAU is tearing up the gown and burning down the town.
Some people are obviously obsessed with Adolf Hitler and Ariel Sharon; two names that have brought untold hardship to the world because they saw any other person with a different way of life as less than human. This is exactly the same category that the various people at Obafemi Awolowo University that have made Muslim sisters their target in impressing their wounded egos fall into. And what an abysmal level to operate in at this present age of human advancement!
Muslims have suffered in the lands of their fathers, and the forceful conversion in order to have a mere primary education in the days of colonialism kick started this. One would have however expected a school of OAU’s standing to act within its purview to dismember prejudice and hate. Alas, what do we have? The OAU authority and its many representatives have inadvertently pushed the Muslim woman to the lowest rung of the societal ladder. They have rendered our women low and vulnerable to insult by people whose education has failed to transform into agents of good.  What a piece of headscarf or a face veil has done to harm these people may not be found out by rocket science or a molecular biology but it is crystal clear: a striking hatred for Islam and Muslims.
“They had nothing against them, except that they believed in Allah, the All-Mighty, Worthy of all,” Qur’an 85:8.
In principle, Obafemi Awolowo University says “Muslims are not welcome here and they may go to blazes for all we care”.OAU has done a great damage to liberty and equity; they have rendered those words hollow and empty.
Ibrahim Balogun wrote from Ibadan.  <[email protected]>