ucanews.com reporter, Beijing

China

May 12, 2015

A university in central China has sparked controversy after issuing a rare order banning female students from wearing headscarves on campus.

Shaanxi Normal University in Xian, a city with a large Islamic population, reportedly told nine female Muslims to remove their veils in April and then issued a notice banning Islamic headscarves earlier this month.

Another male student was also reportedly accused of “illegal preaching” after he was caught reading the Qur’an in a cafeteria at the same university last month.

“We accept their customs. But our bottom line is that we do not allow students to engage in religious activities,” Li Chenzi, a university official, wrote on the Chinese question-and-answer website Zhihu.com yesterday after debate over the ban went viral.

Although Li denied the students were ordered to remove their veils, one of them today anonymously refuted the university’s claims in an interview with the state-run Global Times.

“The headscarf ban has spread to all Muslim students of various ethnic groups, including the Uyghur, Kazak and Hui people, as the authorities claimed that the ban was released by the Ministry of Education,” the student said.

Chinese universities have exerted stricter controls on ideology since Xi Jinping became president more than two years ago, but there is no overt ban on religious clothing being worn on campuses.

Xian has traditionally seen few restrictions on its multi-ethnic population which includes at least 50,000 minority Hui Muslims, many of whom live in the narrow streets around the city’s Great Mosque, the oldest in China.

Authorities in restive Xinjiang outlawed Islamic veils from all public places at the start of the year amid a crackdown on extremism following a rise in separatist violence in the region last year.

In Kashgar, authorities boasted in March that a number of “outlaws blinded by religious extremism” had been sentenced for wearing burqas, according to state media reports that were later deleted, reportedly following an order issued by censors.

Some areas of Xinjiang began enforcing bans on veils last year, including Turpan where authorities drafted legislation closely modeled on Islamic head-dress prohibitions enacted in France and Belgium.

http://www.ucanews.com/news/university-in-china-stirs-controversy-with-muslim-headscarf-ban/73563