Head Covering Sought For Women

Women who want to attend university in Sudan may be required to wear Islamic head coverings, a newspaper reported.

The daily Al-Engaz Al-Watani quoted Sudan’s minister of higher education, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, on Saturday as saying he endorses the idea and believes it should start soon.

The requirement apparently would apply to private and public universities.

The call for requiring Islamic head cover, or higab, came from a group of women students at the Holy Koran University, the paper said. It quoted Omar as saying it would become “the official position” of his ministry.

Sudan’s Islamic government was installed after Lt. Gen. Omar el-Bashir took power in a 1989 coup. His policy has been that higab is recommended - but not required - of women working in the government or attending schools.

An effort about three years ago to require women to wear Islamic dress met with open resistance and was quietly dropped by the government. But a higab head cover is required for girls and women while they serve in the government-run militia.

More than 33,000 students are enrolled in Sudanese universities. At Khartoum University, the largest, 60 percent of the 16,000 students are women.

The group at Holy Koran University also has proposed that women students “not be allowed under any circumstance to use cosmetics while inside the university premises,” the paper said. It did not say if the ministry also endorsed this recommendation.