Muslim women urge FG to intensify fight against terrorism

Nigerian Muslim women on Tuesday called on the Federal Government to intensify the fight against terrorism with the deployment of intelligence and modern security gadgets.

Such security gadgets, they argue, will aid the security operatives to detect bombs and stop those involved in the evil, rather than think in the direction of restricting or banning hijab, which is the symbol of submission to God by Muslim women.

The women spoke Tuesday in Ikeja at a forum to announce the readiness of Muslim women in Nigeria to join the rest of the world in marking World Hijab Day on February 1, just as they condemned the harassment and stigmatisation of hijab wearing women in the country.

Nimatullah Abdullateef, national coordinator of Al-Mu’minaat Organisation, Muslim women, said the body was worried by the way the Nigerian army harassed women within and outside conflict zones just because they put on hijab.

According to Abdullateef, Muslim women remembered with painful nostalgia the hopefully isolated incidents of harassment, persecution, emotional and psychological anguish hijabis had suffered in Nigeria in recent time, especially after President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement that the nation might consider a ban on hijab if terrorists continue to use women in hijab to bomb innocent Nigerians.

Abdullateef said the recent move by the Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Ibadan office, to legislate and limit the hijab standards of Muslim women and free citizens of Nigeria still remained a festering sore in “our heart, while we note with suppressed anguish the harassment of Muslim women in hijab by officers and men of the Nigerian army within and without military installations in different cities all over Nigeria.”

Speaking also, Uzamat Yussuf, commissioner for youth and social development, also decried frequent stigmatisation of Muslim women in hijab, saying they were often regarded as religious fanatics.

Yussuf, who was represented by Rashidat Umar, said due to such misconceptions, the larger society failed to acknowledge and appreciate Muslim women’s courage in standing up to societal norms in their determination to preserve their modesty and obey the command of God.