Although social advocates are rising against the Kano Hisbah for condemning the hijab-wearing nlatest Miss Nigeria Shatu Garko for participating in the pageant, the Muslim Rights Concern has expressed support for the Hisbah on the matter.
According to MURIC’s founder, Ishaq Akintola, people who are decent will not participate in beauty pageants
He noted on Wednesday that Shatu’s participation in the Miss Nigeria project was like taking part in BBNaija where, he said, people opened their intimate worlds to the camera.
‘The Punch’ quoted him as saying, “These two verses emphatically insist that women should cover themselves and dress up decently and neither should display their body for the public. Being present in a beauty pageant even if she was in a hijab, she had done the catwalked with thousands of men eating her up with their eyes. It is not acceptable.
“We are not quite impressed by the development because the environment itself is un-Islamic – women parading their bodies and all of that. Hers may be different but she is not supposed to mix with those kinds of people. It is like going for BBNaija and using Hijab or dressing like a Muslim but you participated in BBNaija where people make love before the camera and millions of Nigerians are watching.
“In a beauty pageant, women also parade their bodies in stages, they come in bikini and all of that. It is not an exercise a Muslim lady should participate in, people who are decent, who have shame, who have honour, who would not display their nudity, who would not expose their bums for millions of naira should not participate in such pageants.”
While the Hisbah have invited Shatu’s father for questioning, the likes of Senator Shehu Sanni and Civil rights activist, Aisha Yesufu, have condemned the move.
“Ms Shatu Garko contested Miss Nigeria pageant decently dressed. She has not crossed the line of our cultural standards here in the North. There are the daughters of the rich and the powerful that have done that with impunity. I appeal to the Hisbah religious authorities to let her be,” Sanni had tweeted.
On her part, Yesufu noted, “So my daughter will participate in beauty pageant and Hisbah will invite me?! Kai! I laugh in unmade D! They will know that day that all of us have bed in psychiatric hospital! Nonsense and rubbish! Nobody has monopoly of violence and foolishness!”(sic).
