Aden Duale, the Defence Cabinet Secretary, has warned Kenyan Muslim women who do not wear a hijab or scarf to find another country to live.
The CS spoke on Tuesday at the Sir Ali Muslim Club in Parkroad, Nairobi, during the launch of the International Quran Competition.
Muslim leaders from the country’s key Muslim institutions, as well as international renown Islamic scholars and Imams from Nairobi and its environs, attended the event.
He warned that if anyone has a problem with hijabs, then they should look for other countries to live in.
“If you have a problem with our girls, wives and sisters wearing Hijab, and you are in Kenya, then you better leave this country because they will wear Hijab,” said Duale at the event attended by Muslim leaders and renowned Islamic scholars and Imams.
And speaking in the Somali dialect, Duale went on to state: “Our girls will wear Hijab, what’s wrong. Isn’t it that way? For those who don’t wear Hijab and are Muslims, they should hear me, if you don’t wear Hijab and you want to be naked, look for other countries. Yes. Look for other countries.”
A hijab is a head-covering scarf that some Muslim women and girls wear in public. For many of them, the hijab signifies both modesty and privacy.
This is not the first time that the Defence CS has called for women to wear hijabs or scarfs.
In 2019, he said that the Ministry of Education should take disciplinary action against school heads forcing Muslim girls to remove hijabs.
He claimed that Muslim girls faced discrimination because of the religious dressing and asked the then Education CS George Magoha to issue a directive to protect them.
He said the banning of hijabs amounts to religious discrimination and a violation of the students’ constitutional rights.
