Two niqab-wearing students at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Ciputat, South Tangerang, who requested that they be identified only as Ani and Ana, were sitting at a small eatery near their campus when The Jakarta Post met with them.

It was their lunch break, and they sat comfortably among other students at the eatery, sipping iced tea from time to time through straws sneaked into their cloth-covered mouths.

Ani and Ana are college sophomores and had only started wearing niqab a month ago, though they claimed to have thought about covering their faces for years.

The 20-year-old students, who study at the university’s School of Islamic Propagation and Communication, said they believed Muslim women should wear veils.

“Wearing the niqab encourages me to do good deeds, because people will not see me only as an individual but more importantly as a representation of Islam,” Ani said.

Ani and Ana are not alone. They are among the growing number of students at Indonesian universities who have decided to don the niqab.

Wearing a full-face veil has never been considered mainstream Islamic practice in Indonesia, where a large number of Muslim women do not wear a hijab.

The growing popularity of niqab — which has often been associated with religious extremism — has naturally sparked alarm among universities.

Of all the universities in the country, Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta was the first to prohibit its students from wearing veils on campus. The university has gone on to open a counseling program for niqab-wearing students in hopes that they revert to adopting a “moderate Islam” dress code.

“We will offer seven sessions of private counseling. If after the seventh meeting they still refuse to take off their niqab, they have to move to another campus,” the university’s rector, Yudian Wahyudi, said on Monday.

Yudian said the campus had enlisted 41 niqab-wearing students to take part in the counseling program, through which they would be counseled by a team of five people well-versed in psychology, Islamic studies and social sciences.

Each school will have a counseling team.

The policy has stirred national controversy, but Yudian says the university has its reasons for implementing it, including to save Indonesia from religious extremism. “This action is in accordance with the [university’s] commitment to moderate Islam. These girls must understand that the niqab is just a part of Arabic culture, therefore it is not appropriate in Indonesian society,” he said.

He also said that such a measure was necessary to ensure the integrity of academic assessment. “If we can’t see the student’s face, we cannot identify whether the person attending a lecture or taking a test is the same person in the class registry. It can make assessment complicated.”

He argued that students had been asked to sign an agreement pertaining to the university’s dress code before enrolling. “Niqab is not included in the dress code,” he said.

Meanwhile, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University has no plans to ban the niqab. “As much as we commit to moderate Islam, we have to respect students’ right to wear the niqab,” its rector, Dede Rosyada,
told the Post.

However, he did disclose that one of its faculty members had refused to teach students that covered their faces. “In cases like that we facilitate the students by providing another lecturer,” he said.

Regular state universities, including the University of Indonesia in Jakarta and Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, which also have a number of niqab-wearing students, also have no plans to ban the Islamic garment. UGM spokeswoman Iva Ariani said her university had chosen to focus more on instilling nationalism and Pancasila-based values in students.

Muslim scholars are divided over whether Muslim women are required to cover their faces, but the majority of them believe doing so is unnecessary. Moreover, one of four Islamic schools, the Malikis, considers the niqab as ghuluw (excessive).

The nation’s largest Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, believe wearing a veil is not obligatory for Muslim women. They argue that the Quran only advises women to be modest by covering their bodies, except their faces and palms.

Niqab is commonly used in Islamic countries on the Arabian peninsula such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The veil has been associated with religious fundamentalism and is banned in several European nations such as France, Germany and Austria.

Syafieq Hasyim, an NU scholar, said banning students from wearing the niqab was fine.

“If a campus bans niqab, just like banning male students from growing their hair out, it is fair. It is unfair if the ban is based on a stereotype that all women in niqabs are radicals.”

The Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute slammed Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University’s policy, calling it discriminatory and a human rights violation.

“The university’s rector must uphold freedom of religion,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Ani said she was aware of the stigma associated with the niqab, “I’ve heard people say I’m a radical. One time someone yelled at me at the train station. I have to endure it. It is the road less traveled that I’ve chosen.”

Ana said she was against radicalism.“To be honest, as women in niqabs, we fear that radical groups may approach us and lure us into their extremist teachings. To prevent that, we have to keep learning the appropriate religious lessons through sermons at our local mosques, and also from YouTube,” she said.

Both girls said they would not remove their niqabs and would wear face masks to campus if their university decided to ban the veils.

“I have a responsibility to show the world that Islam is good and beautiful,” Ani said. (gis)

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