Lawyer questions religious dress for young girls in Azerbaijan

The issue of young girls being sent to school wearing hijabs and religious clothing, and of their being distanced from secular education, has recently come to the fore in public debate.

Commenting on the issue to TodayPress TV, lawyer Ilgar Altay assessed the contradictions underlying this process, raising pointed questions and presenting forceful arguments.

The lawyer said that women who subject infant girls to strict religious rules at such an early age are themselves, in fact, bearers of traditional values and would give unequivocally negative answers to the questions he raises:

“I have just two questions for the Azerbaijani mothers, grandmothers and other women of our nation in this video and in similar cases, who insist on dressing their infant daughters and granddaughters in hijabs and binding them to a religion governed by 7th-century rules, while sending them not to religious madrasas but to secular schools in a secular state.

Would you marry this child off at the age of 9–12, the age of ‘biological maturity’, in accordance with the rules of Islam and the Quran, in which you profess such deep and strict belief? I am certain they would say, ‘No, what are you talking about!’ And rightly so, because, whatever the case, they are Azerbaijani women by blood and ancestry, with Turkic national roots.

Would you yourselves agree to become your husband’s fourth wife under the rules of Islam and the Quran, in which you profess such deep and strict belief? I am certain they would say, ‘No, what are you talking about!’ And rightly so, because, whatever the case, they are Azerbaijani women by blood and ancestry, with Turkic national roots.”

Ilgar Altay noted that behind such contradictory behaviour lie either a lack of deep understanding or the interests of foreign circles:

“In such a case, two logical conclusions can be drawn. Either these women have failed to understand the deeper roots of religion and have joined it naively, swept along by the crowd, without fully embracing its beliefs or understanding them, and have also drawn their own children into this path. Or, out of some personal necessity or for reasons of interest and benefit, these women are carrying out the instructions of radical and destructive circles that are fuelling the hijab issue, using their own children for this purpose as well. No other explanation seems possible. If anyone knows of another, let them say so,” he concluded.

Turkan Iskandarli