Pakistan university issues dress code diktat for students

The draconian censorship rules and blasphemy laws of Pakistan are in the spotlight once again after a university in Mansehra district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province issued a new dress code for the students, faculty and administration staff.

According to the new notification issued by the Hazara University, female students and staffers have been asked to wear an abaya, scarf and salwar kameez instead of skinny jeans, tights and t-shirts. Excessive make-up, jewels and carrying large hand bags has also been forbidden.

The males too have been directed not to wear skin-tight jeans, shorts, chains and slippers. Long hair and pony tails are also not allowed anymore.

The administration staff and teachers are also forbidden to wear shorts, skinny jeans, slippers earrings and wrist chains as per the proposals approved in the 22nd meeting of the academic council held on December 29 last year under the chairmanship of the university dean.

The dress code has been implemented on the directives of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Governor Shah Farman who is the chancellor of the university, reported Pakistan daily <em>The Express Tribune</em>.

"While responding to queries related to the new dress code, Kamran Bangash, spokesperson of the provincial government and special adviser on education to the chief minister, welcomed the new development and said that students will be able to focus on their studies instead of engaging in a dress competition," the newspaper said today.

The growing radicalism in the educational institutions of Pakistan has been highlighted for the past many decades.

Last year, Punjab's Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar had issued a notification making the teaching of the Quran with translation mandatory for all the university students. The notification mentioned that the students will not awarded degrees if they fail to learn the Quran with Urdu translation and that the holy book will be taught separately from the subject of Islamic studies which is already being taught in all the universities.

Madrasas in Pakistan are also no longer teaching sacred laws or other Islamic subjects as Munir Mengal, a political analyst, researcher and president of the Paris-based NGO Baloch Voice Association, had highlighted last year in the meeting of the 18th Session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action at United Nations in Geneva.

“Mr. Chairperson, I used to go to school in a very high-standard, state-run Army school called the Cadet College. The first lesson taught to us was that Hindus are kafirs (a pejorative and derogatory term usually used for non-Muslims), Jews are enemies of Islam, and both are liable to death for no other reason. Even today the same is the first, most important and basic message from uniformed Army teachers which is that we have to respect guns and bombs because we have to use these against Hindu mothers to kill them otherwise they will give birth to a Hindu child,” Mengal had said in his speech..