Wearing the Hijab in Schools Has Been Finally Banned in Azerbaijan

News:

On September 21, the government of Azerbaijan adopted a resolution effectively banning the wearing of the hijab in public schools. According to the document, signed by Prime Minister Ali Asadov, students are prohibited from wearing “items of clothing that violate the uniformity of the prescribed uniform, as well as those that do not comply with the principle of secularism in general education.” The word “hijab” is not explicitly mentioned in the text of the resolution; however, since the religious head covering is not part of the approved school uniform, the changes are interpreted specifically as a ban on wearing it.

The new resolution is based on amendments to the Law “On General Education,” signed by President Aliyev on July 7, 2026. At that time, “national values and secularism” were added to the basic principles of the general education system, and the obligation of students and teachers to comply with clothing requirements was enshrined in law. On July 22, Aliyev instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to bring the existing rules into line with the new law.

Comment:

It should be recalled that this is not the first attempt to ban the wearing of the hijab in educational institutions in Azerbaijan. An attempt to introduce a complete ban was already made by the Aliyev regime in 2010–2011. At the time, this provoked a strong public reaction and mass protests across the country, followed by numerous arrests of activists.

Apparently, the Azerbaijani regime believed that society would react more indifferently to the ban this time and, apparently, was not mistaken. Only a few isolated voices were raised against the ban this time, and they were immediately silenced. Thus, on the very next day after the ban was introduced, the well-known Shiite theologian Abgul Suleymanov was detained—on September 24, a court sentenced him to 30 days of administrative detention. Obviously, this was a response to his social media posts in which he criticized the new ban—he wrote that if such a ban were introduced, he would “prefer to end up in prison.”

The fight against Islam is a “factory setting” of every regime in the post-Soviet space, built in when these regimes were established with the participation of Russia and the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in the case of Azerbaijan, even close relations with a strategic partner such as Türkiye, which pursues an entirely different policy regarding the hijab and certain other attributes of Islam, did not prevent this.