Goh says no to wearing 'jilbab'

Goh says no to wearing 'jilbab'

Agencies, Singapore

The four Muslim students at the center of a headscarves row will be suspended from their schools if they insist on wearing scarves to classes, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in remarks published in the Sunday Times.

"You cannot give way on that. If the schools give way, then I think let us not have any rules," Goh said in his first public comments on the issue.

"So that is very clear. They will be suspended," he said. Muslim students cannot wear the scarves, also known as tudung or jilbab, in school but they are allowed to don the headgear once they are outside the premises.

Defending the government's policy, which has attracted criticism from some officials and groups in neighboring Malaysia, Goh said the ban was aimed at fostering interracial harmony in schools.

"Our national school system enables young Singaporeans to mix and study and play together without being conscious of their race, religion or social status. The schools are our common, Singapore space," he said.

Two of the students have now complied with the school uniform rules after pressure from the authorities, and two others were given until Monday to fall in line or face expulsion.

All four students, aged around seven, are in their first year of primary school.

In a rare case of civil disobedience, the parents of Nurul Nasihah and Siti Farwizah Mohamad Kassim have defied the national rule on common public school uniforms by having their daughters wear the traditional Muslim tudung.

The impasse comes at a sensitive time for the city state of four million people as the government and religious leaders stress the need for harmony after the arrests in December of 13 suspected Muslim militants for plotting a bombing campaign.

Singapore, whose Chinese population outnumbers the Malay and Indian communities by three to one, has had little ethnic trouble since race riots in 1964 but is ever conscious of the presence of massive Muslim neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia.

Mohamad Nasser said his daughter Nurul would remove her headscarf only if she were allowed to wear it when she enters secondary school.

"I have not decided if I will send her to school on Monday," he told the Sunday Times newspaper. "I will discuss the matter with my family and relatives."

Abdul Aziz Shamsudin, the deputy education minister of Muslim but secular Malaysia, waded into the debate by calling on the government to reconsider, prompting a sharp rebuke last week that he should not be meddling in Singapore's affairs.

Almost all of the city state's 450,000 Malays are Muslim, making Islam the second-largest religion after Buddhism.

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States and the arrests of the suspected militants, Singapore's Muslim leaders have been at pains to emphasize the moderate nature of their community and its role in society.

But the issue of headscarves is only one of several long- standing grievances that include the exclusion of Muslim men from sensitive areas of the military and concern over Malays lagging behind the Chinese majority economically.

The minister in charge of Muslim affairs, Abdullah Tarmugi, said he hoped the parents would comply with the uniform rule "so that we can move on from here".

But one opposition party accused the government of being out of line.

"Racial harmony cannot be preserved by coercing citizens to conform to a certain dress code," the Singapore Democratic Party said in a statement.

"In fact, such a myopic and insensitive ruling will only lead to greater resentment among those being coerced, resulting in an even more polarised society."

The headscarf regulation was all the more glaring, it added, because Sikh boys are allowed to wear turbans under a ruling from Singapore's days as a British colony.