Tunisia allows Hijab on ID papers

In another sign of the revolutions in north Africa bearing fruit for Muslims, Tunisian women will soon be allowed to wear the Hijab on any photographic ID according to an announcement by the interior ministry in that country.

“The minister of the interior will soon authorise the delivery of national identity cards to women who wear the veil,” the ministry said in a statement announcing plans to modify a decree issued in 1993 which had banned the practice of wearing hijab on photo ID.

Tunisia before the revolution was one of the worse in the world towards practicing Muslim women and there were even instances of women wearing hijab and niqab being assaulted by the secular Police including one notorious raping of a niqab wearing sister with a soda bottle by Tunis police which prompted government ministers there to go on national TV praising the Police’s efforts to enforce secular values.

Since the revolution, secularists around the world have been horrified to so many Muslim women in Tunis and elsewhere in Tunisia choose to go back to wearing the Hijab and even in some instances the Niqab and they fail to see that in doing so these sisters are asking for their dignity and respect for their legitimate rights in Islam.

The statement from the new Tunisian government continued “This measure is right in line with reforms undertaken with a mind to promoting the principles and values of the Tunisian revolution (in January) and to guaranteeing the effective respect of public and civil liberties.”

Men have been entitled to wear beards on their identity cards since February 12th, in a measure taken shortly after the popular uprising that topped the corrupt kufr regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and last month saw riot police on the streets to defend a series of government licensed brothels in Tunis from Islamic protestors who only agreed to return home when the interior ministry agreed to revoke their lincenses and shut them down.

Though the new government is far from Islamic, and is still a secular taghoot regime, ruling by man made law it is still far better than the regime of Ben Ali, may Allaah guide him or destroy the disgusting kafir murtad.

Despite assurances from the moderate Ennahda semi-Islamic party to respect existing laws, something The Islamic Standard feels is incorrect, this is not enough for the most ardent feminists and militant secularists who are already pining for the days of the Ben Ali regime when the Police forced women to uncover.

“There is no question of making concessions on our gains, nor accepting the obscurantism of those who want to take us back by 14 centuries,” women’s activist Fathia Baazi told a conference in mid-March organised by four local non-governmental organisations, including the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women.

So to them, the noble example of the Quran and Sunnah and the mothers of the believers is to be mocked, to be called backwards and out of date in an example of clear kufr.

They should know Islam respected the respective rights of man and woman 14 centuries ago, that their modernity offers nothing but an illusion of equality whilst oppressing the rights of both men and women and women in Tunisia already face difficulties finding husbands due to the unjust and unislamic ban on polygamy when men die younger and so many young brothers leave the country to find work overseas.

Though we should all be happy to see progress in Tunisia towards Islamic norms, even if there is a long way to go, we should remember that the rights of both men and women can only be fully realised when both respect the rights of the other sex in matters of marriage and indeed in all aspects of life.

In Islam men and women have different rights this is true, different but equal.

Sameness does not equal equally but is in fact an injustice as women are forced to live masculine lives out of their God-given nature in a way which they can never fairly compete and it is one of the major failures of feminism.

The Islamic Standard welcomes this small step by the Tunisian authorities and looks forward to the day Inshallaah when it along with the rest of the Muslim lands thrives under the Shariah of Allaah, not the tyranny of man-made laws.