Row over hijab for MPs divides Kuwait

James Calderwood, foreign correspondent

• Last Updated: October 21. 2009 1:34AM UAE / October 20. 2009 9:34PM GMT

Female MPs Salwa al Jassar, left; Rola Dashti, centre; Massuma al Mubarak, right; and Aseel al Awadhi, top; at a parliament session in Kuwait City. Yasser al Zayyat / AFP

The constitutional court will decide later this month whether to scrap an article of the election law that Islamists say requires women to wear the hijab in parliament, after two weeks of arguments between conservative and liberal MPs.

The issue of female ministers and MPs not wearing hijabs in the national assembly has grated with Islamists ever since women received full political rights in 2005. The controversy was resurrected this month when the ultraconservative MP Mohammed al Hayef asked the ministry of Islamic affairs and endowments’ fatwa department if Sharia obliged women to wear the hijab.

When the department said the hijab is a requirement for Muslim women, Islamists reiterated their case for imposing hijabs on the national assembly’s female members.

They cited article 1 of the 2005 election law, which states: “A condition for women to vote and be elected is to abide by the rules and terms of Sharia law.”

Of the four women who were elected to Kuwait’s parliament for the first time in May, two do not wear the Islamic headscarf. The only woman in the cabinet, the minister of education, Moudhi al Humoud, is also uncovered.

Prominent liberals such as the former MP Mohammed al Sager sprung to the defence of the women at a conference last week organised by a liberal political group called the Democratic Forum.

Rola Dashti, an MP who does not wear the hijab, submitted a proposal last week to the constitutional court that it removes the controversial sentence from the election law.

She said in a statement that “it was formulated in such broad terms that it could be interpreted in various ways and … it goes against the core principles set out in the constitution, mainly individual freedom”.

Another woman who was elected this year, Aseel al Awadhi, asked: “Why do only women have to comply with Sharia law and not men? This is by itself discrimination.

“Some Islamists interpret the Sharia to mean that women have to cover if they going to run or vote and that’s totally unconstitutional, because you’re forcing women to cover,” Ms al Awadhi said. “We don’t have such a law for the country, so why should MPs have to cover?

“This is what I faced in the first session I was in the parliament,” she said.

Several Islamist MPs boycotted the swearing-in ceremonies of the first female MPs earlier this year and the first female ministers in 2005, protesting at their refusal to wear the hijab. The parliament’s more extreme Islamists still believe it is a sin for women to stand or vote in elections.

Two of the women who were elected this year wear the hijab and do not describe themselves as liberals.

One of those women, Salwa al Jassar, said even though she believed Muslim women must cover, they cannot be forced to do so.

“Islam explains that we can’t refuse it, it’s a must,” Ms al Jassar said. “This is what the Islamic religion says, but it’s up to the lady.”

The row over wearing the hijab threatens to polarise Kuwaiti society. This week, Kuwait’s conservatives started to fight back.

The Social Reform Society, an Islamic charity that has ties to the Kuwaiti branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Constitutional Movement, released a statement on Monday calling for “full commitment to Islamic laws obliging Muslim women to wear a veil in compliance with the fatwa released by the ministry”.

“The Social Reform Society supports and defends what was decreed by the ministry of Islamic affairs and endowments regarding the veil,” the statement said.

Abdul-Reda Assiri, a professor of political sciences and the dean of the college of social sciences at Kuwait University, said Islamists, who lost seats to the liberals in this year’s election, were using the hijab to jockey for more leverage before parliament would begin again after its summer break next week.

“This is a good issue [for the Islamists]. It will polarise society and bring people behind them. It will distract government from its own priorities,” Mr Assiri said.

“If we had a solid, strong government, it could withstand all these forces, but since we lack that, then you have to expect anything. Very soon, you will hear the appointment of some of them in high positions: the Islamists and the Bedouins. The hijab is just a cover, they will blackmail the government.”

Khalifa Alhoumaidah, an expert in constitutional and administrative law at Kuwait University, said that fatwas were “religious guidance and the powers in the country shouldn’t be bound by it”.

He said the election law, which covers “the election process”, is not specific, and the legal debate is over whether the law just covers election day itself, or the entire parliamentary process.

He said the constitutional court’s decision will become law and if it rules that women have to constitutionally wear the veil, the uncovered women might lose their membership of the parliament.

Such an outcome would be a disaster for Kuwait’s liberals, but Mr Assiri, the political scientist, doubted this will happen.

He said: “I would say the court will say it is personal preference and either leave it or refer it to the executive. I don’t think the constitutional court wants to take action.

“Kuwait was been in much bigger disasters, so this is not the end of political life. It’s another setback: one after another,” he said.

jcalderwood@thenational.ae