Journalists treat incident with niqab in Dagestan as not typical

A woman, whose niqab a man tried to remove because of a temporary ban by the muftiate, lodged a complaint to the police. There are opponents of wearing niqab in Dagestan, but no such aggressive actions have ever happened earlier, journalists note.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that social media users in Dagestan expressed their indignation by a video showing an aggressive passer-by attacking a woman in a niqab in Makhachkala. The man motivated his attempts to remove the woman’s niqab by the muftiate's ban on such type of religious clothing.

Advocate Davud Aliev advises the young woman in the niqab to appeal to the police with a complaint about the aggressive reaction of a man in Makhachkala. According to the advocate’s version, the man humiliated the woman’s human dignity.

Advocate Aza Alieva reports that the woman in the niqab lodged a complaint to the police.

Journalist Milrad Fatullaev does not believe that the discussion of proposals to ban the wearing of niqabs in Russia is fuelling aggressive sentiment against those who wear the mentioned clothing.

“I haven’t really noticed anything like that. My feeling is that about 30 percent of the population of Dagestan is against the wearing of niqabs, about the same number stands for it, and the rest are quite indifferent. The video, it seems to me, looks more like a provocation, including against the muftiate,” the journalist noted.

Milrad Fatullaev suggests that even the temporary ban on wearing the niqab, introduced by the muftiate, does not provoke aggressive actions against women who wear niqabs.

Another journalist believes that the discussion of proposals to ban the wearing of the niqab is fuelling aggressive sentiment against those who wear the mentioned clothing in non-Muslim regions of Russia, but not in Dagestan.