Once again, Turkish women can no longer wear headscarves at their universities, after a new ruling from Turkish courts yesterday.

In the 1990s, the judicial elites in Turkey banned women from wearing their traditional headscarves on Turkish campuses. The idea was that the veil was too far outside the lines of secularism (or outside the lines of a government where religion was kept separate from government). Then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who won the election and subsequent popularity last year, tried to implement a legal rule that would allow women to make their own individual choices about whether to wear a headscarf in public. According to The New York Times, Erdogan is a Muslim himself and wanted women attending colleges to be able to decide for themselves what to wear and what to believe.

But today, the court ruled his legal change unconstitutional. And once again, Muslim women in Turkey will not be allowed to wear headscarves on campus. It will be illegal.

The headscarf, called a hijrab in Arabic, is a veil typically worn by Muslim women. It covers the head, hair, and/or face and serves as a sign of modesty.

Filed under: Islam, Religion and Ethics, Religion and Law, Religion and Politics