Several days ago, the security of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) refused to let a girl, who came for entrance exams preparation courses wearing a hijab, into the university. Her sister, Amina Shabanova, fashion designer, founder and head IRADA company, issued a statement in social networks: "Outrageous believer rights violation! My sister is a medalist, who graduated from school with all "A", applied for admission to the MGIMO university, came there for these courses. Security guards did not let her in, saying that there is an order that you can't enter the university building in a hijab, moreover, you can't study while wearing it. The charter stipulates that you can't study wearing a headdress... I immediately went there to deal with this situation. Security chief said: He wants to study - she must take off hijab ... No one wears hijab in our university... What do you think about it?"
The chairman of the Russian Muftis Council and the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia, Rushan Abbyasov, answered this rhetorical question: "There are many Muslims in the MGIMO. There are a lot of their student communities. I hope that after all all of this is just a shortsightedness of the security guard, because according to the comments of university management and the Ministry of Education this is just a misunderstanding. We hope that there won't be abuses like that in our country's universities in the future."
According to Abbyasov, Russian media created an image that girl in hijab is a radical extremist. "We initially asked media to call bandits and terrorists - bandits and terrorists, not 'Islamic State' and so on. An opinion formed over the past 10-15 years, that if a girl wears hijab and a man wears long beard, follows the principles of Islam, they can be a threat. People like that committed crimes, carried out suicide bombings, killing themselves and innocent people. But we should fight against such image, so that those who are uninformed about religious matters would not have wrong impression," he stated.
He urged not to confuse secular state with atheistic state: "We're talking about democratic development of our society and we must understand that wearing a hijab is a precept of Islam. Another question is that someone follows it, and someone does not. But this is a matter of internal relations of every Muslim with the Almighty."
