YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia: A pair of Indonesian Islamic universities are pushing female students to ditch niqab face veils — with one threatening expulsion for non-compliance — as concerns grow over rising fundamentalism in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation.
Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University said it issued the edict this week to more than three dozen niqab-wearing students, who will be booted from school if they refuse.
Although niqabs are common in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, they’re rare in secular Indonesia, where around 90 percent of its 260 million people have traditionally followed a moderate form of Islam.
For many Indonesians, the niqab — a full veil with a small slit for the eyes — is an unwelcome Arab export and some associate it with radical Islam, which the country has wrestled with for years.
“We are a state university ... we’ve been told to spread moderate Islam,” the school’s chancellor Yudian Wahyudi told a press briefing this week.
The school, based in Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta, has some 10,000 students.
Another Yogyakarta-based institution, Ahmad Dahlan University, has also introduced a new prohibition on the niqab out of fears it might stir up religious radicalism, which has seen a resurgence on many of the nation’s university campuses.
There will be no penalty for those who refuse, it added.
“But during exams, they cannot wear it because officials have to match the photos on their exam ID with them, which is hard if one is wearing the niqab,” university chancellor Kasiyarno, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told reporters Wednesday.
Indonesia’s reputation as a bastion of progressiveness and religious tolerance has recently been tested by a government push to outlaw gay and pre-marital sex. The conservative lurch comes as once-fringe Islamic political parties move into the mainstream.
The niqab has been at the center of a heated global debate over religious freedom and women’s rights, with France the first European country to ban it in public spaces.
Backers of the schools’ new rules said wearing a niqab is not a religious obligation.
“Education should be about dialogue — open and progressive — and if you wear a niqab it interferes in that dialogue and the teaching-learning process,” said Zuhairi Misrawi, head of the Jakarta-based Muslim Moderate Society.
But others saw the anti-niqab appeal as trampling on individual rights.
It’s “a matter of personal preference and the university has to respect that,” said Fadlun Amin, a spokesman for the local chapter of the Forum Ukhuwah Islamiyah, part of top clerical body the Indonesian Ulema Council.
Several Indonesian universities have issued niqab bans in the past.
Last year, a private Islamic high school in Java was reprimanded by local officials after images went viral online that showed a classroom of sitting female students wearing niqab, violating a national regulation on acceptable school uniforms.
Indonesian universities ‘ban’ niqab over fundamentalism fears
Indonesian universities ‘ban’ niqab over fundamentalism fears
South Africa kicks out Israel’s top diplomat
- The government filed a case against Israel with the International Court of Justice in 2023, saying that its war on Gaza breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention
- Israel said it had expelled South Africa’s charge d’affaires in retaliation for its own representative’s expulsion
JOHANNESBURG: South Africa has declared Israel’s top diplomat in the country “persona non grata” and given him 72 hours to leave, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, citing a “series of violations.”
Ties between the two nations are already strained, with South Africa bringing a case before the UN top court in 2023 to argue that Israel’s war on Gaza, an illegally occupied Palestinian territory, amounted to genocide.
The Israeli government had been informed that its charge d’affaires, Ariel Seidman, had been “declared persona non grata” and “required to depart from the Republic within 72 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.
“This decisive measure follows a series of unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa’s sovereignty,” it said.
They included “the repeated use of official Israeli social media platforms to launch insulting attacks” on President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The Foreign Ministry also accused the embassy of a “deliberate failure” to inform South Africa of “purported visits by senior Israeli officials.”
South African officials were angered by a tweet from the Israeli Embassy in November that commented: “A rare moment of wisdom and diplomatic clarity from President Ramaphosa.”
Israel said it had expelled South Africa’s charge d’affaires in retaliation for its own representative’s expulsion.
South African government officials also condemned this month’s visit by an Israeli delegation to the Eastern Cape province, which reportedly offered to provide water, healthcare, and agricultural expertise.
The visit, which appeared to catch the government by surprise, was hosted by a traditional Xhosa king, who had met Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a trip to Israel in December last year.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry accused representatives of Israel of actions that “represent a gross abuse of diplomatic privilege and a fundamental breach of the Vienna Convention.”
“They have systematically undermined the trust and protocols essential for bilateral relations,” it said.
South Africa, which hosts the largest Jewish community in sub-Saharan Africa, is largely supportive of the Palestinian cause and sharply critical of Israel.
Pretoria’s embassy in Tel Aviv has been closed since Nov. 17, 2023.
The government filed a case against Israel with the International Court of Justice in 2023, saying that its war on Gaza breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. Israel has denied that accusation.
When more than 150 Palestinians flew into South Africa in November without departure stamps from Israel on their passports, the South African foreign minister said there appeared to be “a clear agenda to cleanse Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank.”
“We are suspicious as a South African government about the circumstances surrounding the arrival of the plane,” Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said.
There have been regular protests in South Africa against the Israeli government’s and military’s actions in Gaza, including calls for the embassy in Pretoria to be closed.
In an editorial in November, Seidman criticized South Africa for maintaining full ties with Iran but framing any engagement with the Israeli state as “illegitimate.”
