Press Release
The Islamic Obligation of Hijab will never be secured under Turkey's Secular Democratic System

The Confederation of Public Servants Trade Unions (Memur-Sen), the largest union of state workers in Turkey has announced that it has collected over 10 million signatures in support of lifting the ban on hijab on public sector workers in the country which has blighted the life of Turkey's women for over 30 years. The Confederation has stated that it now intends to submit the petition to President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan. In recent months, the (Secular) Justice and Development-led government in Turkey that rode into power on the back of its Islamic credentials has been playing an erratic political game with the hijab, relaxing the ban in universities, Islamic schools, and law courts while continuing to prohibit the dress in state schools, hospitals, and all public buildings.

It is an utter disgrace that Muslim women in Turkey - a Muslim majority country - should have to plead with the government, sign petitions, and protest for the right to fulfil a basic Islamic obligation. Having played the Islamic card to rally popular support to gain power, Erdogan and his government have subsequently failed to remove the hijab ban in their 10 years of ruling, reflecting a leadership that is out of step with the growing Islamic sentiments of the women of Turkey. This is no modern government. It is stuck in the past, pursuing the oppressive secular principles of Mustafa Kamal the enemy of Islam, under which dressing modestly is defined as a crime and where pious girls and women in Islamic dress are marginalized from society, stripped of a good education, employment and other basic rights, and even imprisoned for their obedience to Allah (swt). The recent relaxation of the hijab ban in certain sectors of society by this ‘Guardian of Secularism' is nothing but a cynical ploy that plays on the sincere Islamic sentiments of the devout Muslim women of Turkey to sell them the idea that their Islamic dress can be secured by the democratic system and without the Rule of Allah (swt).

Dear pious sisters of Turkey! The secular democratic system can never secure your Islamic obligation of hijab or any other Command of Allah, reflected by the continuing hijab ban under Turkey's democratic regime as well as the hijab bans in force in other secular democratic states across the world, including in Western Europe. This is an erratic and unpredictable form of governance where rights are given one day and removed the next, leaving Muslim women at the mercy of whichever party or ruler is in power. Dear sisters, wearing the hijab is not a matter of securing personal freedoms or a democratic right, it is an Islamic obligation. And the very fact that Muslim women in Turkey have to fight the state to fulfil this basic Islamic obligation is proof enough that the democratic system stands in absolute contradiction with your deeply held Islamic beliefs. You are the ones who love Allah (swt), so how can you accept any form of governance where politicians have the right to dismiss what your Lord has ordered, or to force you choose between obedience to your Creator and fulfilling your Islamic rights to education or work? You are the ones who submit to the Lord of the Worlds, and you are the grand daughters of the great Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" that raised the flag of Islam across the world. So do not accept for a few crumbs to be thrown at you by the state to appease your hunger for true Islamic change, when Allah (swt) has commanded that all His Laws be implemented upon our Muslim lands. We call you to reject this flawed democratic system and support the establishment of the Khilafah "Caliphate" that will apply comprehensively all the laws of Islam upon the state. The Islamic system of the past did not only enable women to fulfil the obligation of hijab but actively punished those who infringed it as demonstrated by Prophet (saw)'s expulsion of Banu Qaynuqa from Madinah due to one of its members violating the Islamic dress of a Muslim woman. It is therefore only under the Khilafah "Caliphate" system that believing women will be able to wear their Islamic dress with honour and under the full protection of the law.

(وَأَنِ ٱحۡكُم بَيۡنَہُم بِمَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ وَلَا تَتَّبِعۡ أَهۡوَآءَهُمۡ وَٱحۡذَرۡهُمۡ أَن يَفۡتِنُوكَ عَنۢ بَعۡضِ مَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيۡكَ‌)

"So rule between them by that which Allah has revealed, and follow not their desires, but beware of them in case they seduce you from just some part of that which Allah has revealed to you." [TMQ Al-Ma'idah: 49]

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Member of the Central Media Office
of Hizb ut Tahrir