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FUI forces Christian university to drop billboard with hijab-clad student
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A Sanata Dharma Catholic University billboard advertising student enrollment stands on the Gejayan campus in Yogyakarta. A hardline Muslim group forced the Duta Wacana Christian University to take down the billboard depicting students, one of them wearing a hijab, on Thursday. (JP/Bambang Muryanto)
T
he Muslim People Forum (FUI) of Yogyakarta has coerced Duta Wacana Christian University into taking down advertising billboards depicting a student wearing a hijab.
The woman on the enrolment ad is shown in a group of students, with other women not wearing a hijab.
“I have decided to take down the billboard. The billboard has been up for more than three months,” the university’s rector, Henry Feriady, told reporters in Yogyakarta on Thursday.
Henry said that besides taking down the billboard on its campus, the university would also take down five more of the same billboards in separate places of the city.
“They [FUI] objected to it, since the hijab is a symbol of Islam,” he added.
Henry said members of the FUI had come to the campus on Wednesday, demanding the university take down the billboards or they would.
Henry said about seven percent of the university’s 3,800 students were Muslims.
Separately, FUI Yogyakarta field commander M. Fuad Adreago said his organization objected to the picture of a Muslim woman on the billboards.
“We have conveyed our objection. They took down the billboards,” Fuad said.
Several plain-clothes police officers were seen safeguarding the campus on Thursday morning. (jun)
