Muslim student told by university not to wear veil

TIRANA, Oct. 18 – An Albanian student of the Aleksander Moisiu University in Durres was prohibited from wearing a head scarf as a veil as it ran counter to the atheist philosophy of the university. Agim Kukeli, the dean of Aleksander Moisiu University in Durres, told Behije Hoxha of the English branch not to come to the school wearing a traditional Muslim veil. This is the first time that such a case has been reported at any of Albania’s 11 state and 14 private universities. In another case a year ago the high school of foreign languages had tried to do the same thing but then seemed to ‘forget’ it and let the student wear it. There is no regulation in Albania’s universities to ban veils or any religious items. A woman wearing a veil is a rare sight in predominantly Muslim but secular Albania.
The case sparked a religious debate with the Muslim Community harshly protesting the incident. Selim Muca, leader of Albania’s Muslim community, denounced the decision considering it a violation of the student’s human rights. Hoxha had been an excellent student at a religious high school. “What a student wears is a personal issue and suspending her participation in lectures is a violation of human rights,” said Muca who added that he did not plan to lodge an official complaint with the government. That did not seem to coincide with what his deputy Saimir Rusheku said. Rusheku called the act a blatant discrimination without any legal or constitutional basis, adding they would officially complain.
Nevertheless a day later Hoxha told Shekulli newspaper that she had managed to contact the central government (after failing to have any reaction from the Education Ministry) and was told she could continue to wear the veil and take part in the lessons.
The Albanian Human Right Group denounced the suspencion as running counter to the constitution. The group said the case testified to the lack of institutional management rules to resolve the problem, and also a lack of the sublegal acts to resolve it. “Indirect deprivation from the right for the student to get an education is an open violation of Article 18 of the Constitution and also a violation of the right for (regligous) faith as one of the human fundamental rights,” said a statement from the group.
Muslims are thought to make up about two-thirds of Albania’s 3.2 million people, although no census of the country’s religious groups has been take since before World War II. Albania also has large Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic communities. Religion was banned in Albania from 1967 until 1990 by the late Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. All mosques and churches were closed, pillaged, torn to the ground or turned into stores or sports arenas. Hundreds of Muslim and Christian clerics were imprisoned or executed.