Secular in name, Soviet in spirit: The hijab ban in Azerbaijan | Soumaya Ghannoushi ‪@MEEopinions‬

Soumaya Ghannoushi, a writer and expert in Middle East politics, argues that Azerbaijan’s hijab ban in schools is an authoritarian move rooted in the country’s Soviet past rather than secularism. Ghannoushi highlights that the Bolsheviks systematically dismantled religious institutions, closing and demolishing mosques, executing clerics, and altering the national alphabet to sever cultural ties, while also enforcing public unveilings under the banner of “liberation.” She explains that despite decades of Soviet oppression, Islam persisted in the private realm of family life and that the schoolgirls and teachers standing outside the school gates symbolise the direct descendants of families who maintained their faith in secrecy during that repressive period. She says that officials who deny these girls access to education are the ideological and operational heirs of the Bolshevik activists who forcibly removed veils from women’s heads in the 1920s.