Hijab-clad women likelier to become terrorists than those in mini-skirts: Kyrgyz Prez

Bishkek: Suggesting that people’s thoughts are sometimes affected by what they wear, Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev said Muslim women can be radicalised to become terrorists if they wear Islamic dresses like hijab and burqa.

According to reports, Atambayev made the statement a week before, while speaking in a debate on cultural identity. He said women in Kyrgyzstan have been wearing miniskirts since 1950s, and they never thought about wearing an explosive belt.

"You can wear even tarpaulin boots on your head, but do not organise bombings. This is not religion. Let them wear even miniskirts but there must not be any blasts,” said Atambayev, who has always dissuaded women in Kyrgyzstan – where 80 percent of the population is Muslim – from wearing Muslim traditional clothes.

"Clothes also can change one's thoughts sometimes. When we were searching for prisoners who had escaped a detention centre, Melis Turganbayev (the former interior minister) came to me and said that they had been eavesdropping on telephone conversations of wives and mistresses of criminals. Their wives and mistresses wore sacks on their heads and they wanted to organise bombings,” he said.

The President asked the women willing to carry out bombings in Kyrgyzstan to leave the country. “We can pay your travel expenses, even to Syria,” he said.

Atambayev’s government had recently faced backlash for putting up banners and hoardings in capital Bishkek in an attempt to dissuade Muslim women from wearing veiled dresses like burqa, hijab or niqab.

The banners and hoardings had pictures of women wearing traditional dress of Kyrgyzstan on one side and women in burqa and hijab on the other, with a tagline – "Poor people! Where are we heading to?" printed on them.

The Muslim community of the Central Asian nation was outraged by the government's move.