By criticizing girls in niqabs, Chechen Mufti transgresses Adats

By publicly reprimanding girls for wearing niqabs, the Mufti of Chechnya is provoking a conflict, Leonid Syukiyainen, an Islamic scholar, believes. According to Adats, only senior men in the family have the right to such criticism, said Ruslan Kutaev, the head of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the "Grozny" TV Channel showed a story about Chechen Mufti's "educational conversation" with girls in niqabs, which became another episode of the authorities' long-term campaign.

Chechnya is actively imposing Muslim traditions, even not connected with the traditional Islam, Leonid Syukiyainen has noted. He sees no reason to regard wearing a niqab as a form of protest.

Ali Magomadov, a political analyst, on the contrary, treats the spread of the Salafist Islam among Chechen youth as an element of resistance to the ruling regime, which declares its adherence to Sunism. In particular, wearing niqabs is a challenge to the Chechen authorities, he has stated.

Ruslan Kutaev, President of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations, did not rule out that girls in niqabs, like young people wearing beards, had created such images as a sign of protest against the policy that the authorities of the Russian Federation are imposing in Northern Caucasus.

According to Mr Syukiyainen, there are no generally binding norms for wearing clothes in Islam. Many women in Muslim countries wear niqabs without being radicalized, he said.

According to Svetlana Gannushkina, the chair of the "Civil Assistance" Committee, public reprimands are humiliating people's human dignity. She recalled that earlier in Chechnya, women who were the first to wear hijabs were subjected to pressure.