Nigeria Village Square

B.U.K.'s Sharia Dress Code

Posted by Nafata Bamaguje on April 20, 2008   |

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Bayero University recently circulated a memo instructing lecturers to enforce its new dress code for students. Among its stipulations, the circular bans "clinging" (body-hugging) clothing including jeans and tee-shirts, which are often body-hugging. Around the world tee-shirt, jeans and close-fitting shirts are almost a uniform among university students, but in BUK such apparel has now been criminalized. In spite of unconvincing denials by the university authorities, this new dress code no doubt emanates from the Islamic injunction prohibiting wearing of tight-fitting, body-hugging clothes that reveal body shape.

If Muslims abhor body-hugging attires, that's their problem, the Shariarists masquerading as moral crusaders (sorry Jihadists) must not be allowed to impose their absurd notions of Islamic decency on we infidels. We Aarna, Kaffirs, infidels or whatever derogatory term Muslims prefer to call us non-Muslims, certainly do not share their aversion for nicely-fitting, body-hugging outfits that highlight the elegance and alluring beauty of our curvaceous human anatomy. On the contrary such outfits enhance our appreciation of the creator's beautiful work.
Muslims who are offended by the sensual beauty revealed by "clinging" apparel can close their eyes or look away, just as we non-Muslims put up with the hideous masquerade-like veil (Niqab) worn by Muslim women, or the unkempt shaggy beard of male Islamists. This is what tolerance in a multi-religious, multicultural nation like Nigeria is all about. Nigeria is not an Islamic state, and BUK is not a Madrassa.
Other Sharia derived recommendations in the obnoxious circular, insist that ladies' dresses must reach well below the knee - at least halfway between the knee and feet. Accordingly knee-length dresses / skirts are declared indecent, thus reducing to sluts esteemed amazons like Cecelia Ibru, Condoleeza Rice and Hilary Clinton who commonly wear such "indecent" knee-length dresses.

In an unconvincing disingenuous attempt to disguise its Islamist agenda, the circular's accompanying glossy colour brochure (apparently BUK hasn't got a better idea on how to spend its money) also pictures a student in dark suit as appropriate dressing. Not even in the Western world where the suit-wearing culture emanated do university students usually wear dark suits, how much less in this hot tropical climate.
Although the Sharia dress code allows Muslim males to keep bushy Islamic beards like their prophet Mohammed in accordance with Islamic Hadith; it bars those of us African traditionalists who happen to be Sango adherents from weaving our hair in emulation of that great deified African sage. I don't suppose Rastafarians would be allowed to wear dreadlocks.

In the circular, BUK justifies its policy by insulting our intelligence with the ludicrous assertion that the dress code ensures that BUK graduates are worthy in character and morals. Obviously students and graduates of Bayero Islamic University are superior in morals and character to those of decadent infidel universities like Havard, Oxford, Cambridge and other world-class ivory towers that have no such dress codes.
The circular lists the 19-member dress code implementation committee, which not surprisingly is dominated by Muslims with a token non-Muslim representation of two women who obviously can't be expected to stand up to their domineering overwhelmingly male Muslim colleagues. Little wonder they came up with the oppressive Sharia dress code.

It is bad enough that BUK a federal university fully owned and funded by our constitutionally secular Federal government, has as its emblem the Islamic crescent and star in Arabic calligraphy. Now they are imposing an Islamic dress code on students. Next they'll probably compel female students & staff to wear Hijab.

According to the circular, the Sharia dress code applies - everyhere on campus except within the privacy of students' residence. If only it were possible to monitor student wears in the privacy of their rooms, one has no doubt the dress code would also apply there.
Lecturers and other senior BUK staff are being co-opted to spy on students and report those who don't conform - remniscent of cold-war communist-type totalitarian police state where citizens were required to spy on each other. The obnoxious document instructs lecturers and other senior staff to - accost violators of the dress code and.hand them over to dress code committee members - thereby conferring powers of arrest on lecturers and other university staff.

Not being a lawyer, this writer is not big on legal matters. Even then, one smells an inexcusable breach of our constitution in this directive that confers powers of arrest on non-law enforcement agents to harass law-abiding citizens for the grievous crime of wearing tight jeans. It is absurd and utterly ridiculous to say the least, and only Sharia-mongering, Islamic bigots can think otherwise.
Hopefully, one expects lecturers (particularly non-Muslim ones) to know better than carry out this ridiculous order of policing students' wear even outside the classroom. In which case the Islamist authorities in BUK may be compelled to recruit their own Hisbah (Islamic police) to enforce the Sharia dress code.

While it is true that youthful exuberance of students may occasionally manifest as provocative dressing, our youths know better than wear mini-skirts to class. This Sharia dress code is therefore uncalled for. Lecturers or other BUK staff who have a modicum of self-respect have no business policing student garb outside the classroom.

Not only is this an unwarranted infringement of personal liberty and intrusion of privacy, there is also the real risk that the dress code enforcement will be religiously divisive, and raise religious tension on campus, as it will almost invariably be Muslims reporting non-Muslims. Non-Muslims just do not consider knee-length dresses, tight-fitting jeans or tee-shirt to be indecent. In fact Christians often wear such "indecent" jeans and "slutty" knee-length dresses to Church, and no amount of sanctimonious preachments and propaganda from the intolerant Sharia dress code committee can change that perception. Narrow-minded Muslim fanatics in BUK must not be allowed to railroad the university (a citadel of cultural & religious diversity) into their bigoted prudish intolerance.

Bayero University is therefore well advised to withdraw the obnoxious circular and refrain from harassing students who do not comply with their Islamic dress code. The Minister of Education and NUC are hereby requested, nay petitioned to call Islamist BUK authorities to order and halt this creeping Islamization of supposedly secular Federal institution. As earlier stated, BUK is not a Madrassa !!

Nafata Bamaguje

Daura, Katsina state