The War of Azerbaijan’s Regime on the Khimar Will Be the Spark That Hastens Its Collapse!
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 622 - 21/10/2026
By: Ramadan Tousoun

Based on Resolution No. 309, issued on September 21, 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan has prohibited the wearing of additional clothing that violates the uniformity of the school uniform or contradicts the principle of secularism in public education.

A reading of the modern history of Muslim countries reveals that educational institutions have been one of the fiercest battlegrounds between the identity of the Ummah and the practices of the state apparatus. Schools, which ought to be spaces for knowledge, upbringing, and building the future, have unfortunately, over many long years, been transformed into arenas for imposing Western-style secularism, pursuing ambitions aimed at transforming society through social engineering projects, and endeavoring to erase Islamic symbols. The most embodied, most painful, and most symbolic form of this coercion was undoubtedly the turning away of female students and teachers wearing the khimar (خمار Shariah headscarf) from school gates, forcibly stripping them of their right to education and teaching.

The scenes witnessed at school gates during this process have taken their place among the most unforgettable tragedies in human history. Young girls heading to their schools in the early dawn hours, carrying their textbooks and wishing to enter their classrooms, were met at the school gates with police barriers and humiliating checkpoints; they were forced either to remove the khimar and renounce their beliefs and their modesty, or to bid farewell to their educational lives. This pressure was also imposed on the female teachers who had dedicated their lives to education and guiding their students. Indeed, thousands of female teachers who were dismissed from their profession, or exiled, or forced to resign, or whose lives were darkened by disciplinary investigations, were compelled to make the cruel choice between their beliefs and their profession.

The atmosphere of tyranny and oppression that the Islamic Ummah endured throughout its modern history was not met with silent acceptance; on the contrary, it ignited the fuse of major societal resistance and a quest for justice. The demonstrations, protests, legal struggles, and mass gatherings initiated by the sons and daughters of the Ummah in front of the schools proved that this ban was not merely about a piece of cloth removed from the head, but was directly related to the existence of the Ummah and its ‘Aqeedah (creed). Indeed, the families standing by their children out of familial sentiment, the believing intellectuals, and the masses with living feelings have always raised their voices against this injustice. As for the point reached in this process, the conflict between truth and falsehood inevitably manifested; for these strict and hostile prohibitions, which lasted for years, were unable to uproot the Islamic identity from the depths of society, nor did they make the khimar (خمار Shariah headscarf) forgotten.

The latest episode in this historical series of assaults on the modest khimar of the chaste women of the Islamic Ummah has emerged in Azerbaijan. The hostility of the Azerbaijani regime toward the khimar—that is, toward Islam—is nothing new; this regime has, for many long years, made the targeted war against Islam and its manifestations, in line with the policies of anti-Islamic Western colonialist states like the Soviet Union and America, a part of its own policies. The Aliyev regime, which knows no bounds in its enmity toward Islam and Muslims and in taking disbelievers as allies, had also attempted to impose a complete ban on the khimar between 2010 and 2011. However, this decision was temporarily pushed out of the public spotlight at that time due to the angry reactions and mass protests it provoked across the country. Yet, this secularist regime either fails to see that the Islamic Ummah is still very much alive, that the painful experiences it endured in the past regarding the khimar constituted a major tribulation and a lesson it will not forget, and that these memories remain powerfully present in its awareness, or it simply chooses to ignore this reality—until it reintroduced the khimar ban onto its agenda and issued a decision to that effect. However, in the wake of this decision, many female teachers and students in Azerbaijan launched the following slogan to break the imposed restrictions in their own way: “If schools are barred to us, then the public squares are ours.”

On the intellectual and political front as well, activists and opponents of the decision launched a sharp attack via platforms against the strict secularist orientations, considering that the crackdown campaign on the khimar in Azerbaijan reveals a profound flaw in the application of secular nationalism. The anger was not even confined to newspapers and social media sites; on October 3rd, a protest vigil was organized in front of the Azerbaijani consulate in Istanbul... Participants raised banners in Turkish and Azeri, the most prominent of which read: “No to the hijab ban in Azerbaijan,” “Don’t let February 28th come to Azerbaijan,” “The hijab is the identity of the Muslim woman,” and “Retract this mistake.”

The Aliyev regime, bewildered by this reaction from the Islamic Ummah, resorted to intimidation and threats like all other Taghuti (tyrannical) regimes. In fact, the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had requested international judicial assistance from Türkiye—which is no different from Azerbaijan in its adoption of secularism—with the aim of opening investigations against individuals who publish posts criticizing the Aliyev regime.

However, let the tyrannical Azerbaijani regime and the agent rulers at its helm know full well that whenever the followers of secularism and the enemies of Islam grow tyrannical and arrogant, they are overthrown and the foundations of their thrones are set ablaze. By the permission of Allah (swt), you too will drown in the tears of that little girl whose khimar you violated and whom you left with eyes flooded with tears, and you will be cast into a deep abyss like the other secular regimes you have witnessed with your own eyes. And this is what the second Khilafah Rashidah (rightly-guided Caliphate) state—whose dawn is now merely a matter of time—will bring about. Thus, victory will belong to a generation that remained noble, preserving its Iman and chastity in the face of tyranny, and placed its loyalty to its Lord above all worldly interests.

[وَيَقُولُونَ مَتَى هُوَ قُلْ عَسَى أَنْ يَكُونَ قَرِيباً] “And they ask, “When is that?” Say, “Perhaps it is near.” [TMQ Surah Al-Isra’a: 51].