Putin backs secular values after school bans hijabs

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse

Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with members of All Russia People's Front at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, October 18, 2012. REUTERS photo

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday waded into a controversial debate over a hijab ban at a Russian school, saying that the country's secular nature should prevail over religious feelings.
 
"We must always treat the religious feelings of people with great respect. That must be shown in the state's activities, in the nuances, in everything," Putin told supporters, quoted by the Interfax news agency.
 
"Secondly we have a secular state and we must proceed from this basis," he added, after being asked for his view on the case of a school in southern Russia that banned girls from wearing the Islamic headscarf.
 
Russian state media interpreted Putin's ambiguous comments as expressing his backing for a hijab ban.
 
"Putin spoke out against the wearing of hijabs in schools," the website of Rossiya 24 rolling news channel reported.
 
Putin spoke after the Muslim leader of the southern Stavropol region complained this week that female pupils at one school were refusing to go to lessons because the authorities did not permit them to wear hijabs.
 
The pro-government daily Izvestiya quoted the village school's headmistress Marina Savchenko as saying that girls would not be permitted to go to lessons in their hijabs, but that they could wear ordinary headscarves instead.
 
It added that the parents had filed a complaint with the local prosecutor.
 
The issue of hijabs is particularly sensitive in Russia's Chechnya region of the North Caucasus, where leader Ramzan Kadyrov has increased pressure on the mainly Muslim inhabitants to observe Islamic traditions including the hijab.
 
There are about 20 million Muslims in Russia, many of them living in the mountainous North Caucasus, as well as in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan on the Volga River.