Female Muslim students can now don hijab at Cambodian schools. (Google photo)IslamOnline.net & Newspapers
CAIRO — Cambodian Muslim students will be allowed to wear Islamic attire, including hijab, as of the new academic year in October, reported the Phnom Penh Post daily on Friday, September 12.
"While students are supposed to wear white shirts and blue trousers to school, Khmer Muslim students will be allowed to wear traditional uniforms to school because we are open minded about students believing in different religions," said Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth Chey Chap.
Prime Minister Hun Sen pledged two months ago to allow Muslim students to wear their Islamic attire at schools.
The decision will be effective when the new academic year starts in October.
Previously, Muslim students, both boys and girls, had to abide by a standard uniform determined by their schools, usually comprises a shirt and a pair of trousers.
This had forced many Muslim students, particularly girls, to abandon their studies.
Some schools were bending the rules to allow female Muslim students to don headgear.
"At the moment Khmer Muslim students don't wear their traditional clothes at school, but they still wear folded scarves around their faces," said Dy Tep Kosal, the director of Chea Sim Cham Reun Roth Secondary School, where Muslims make up nearly 40 percent of its students.
Hijab is an obligatory code of dress for Muslim women.
Inclusive
The government decision drew cheering from Cambodian Muslims.
"This shows that the government doesn't want to discriminate against Muslim students and will show people that there are a lot of Khmer Muslims within the education system," said Zakaryya Adam, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Cults and Religion.
Abdulhalim Kasim, a Muslim student at Norton University, said the decision comes in the right time for female Muslim students.
"While it doesn't make any difference to me because I am a man and can wear whatever Khmer students wear, girls need to wear scarves over their faces," he said.
Kasim said the decision also has broader implications.
"The fact that the government will allow us to wear our traditional clothes means it accepts all religions [and] it will make it easier for Khmer Muslims to study."
There are estimated 700,000 Muslims in Cambodia, making up 5 percent of the country's 13 million population.
Cambodian Muslims are generally located in towns and rural fishing villages on the banks of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers and in Kampot Province in the south.
"While students are supposed to wear white shirts and blue trousers to school, Khmer Muslim students will be allowed to wear traditional uniforms to school because we are open minded about students believing in different religions," said Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth Chey Chap.
Prime Minister Hun Sen pledged two months ago to allow Muslim students to wear their Islamic attire at schools.
The decision will be effective when the new academic year starts in October.
Previously, Muslim students, both boys and girls, had to abide by a standard uniform determined by their schools, usually comprises a shirt and a pair of trousers.
This had forced many Muslim students, particularly girls, to abandon their studies.
Some schools were bending the rules to allow female Muslim students to don headgear.
"At the moment Khmer Muslim students don't wear their traditional clothes at school, but they still wear folded scarves around their faces," said Dy Tep Kosal, the director of Chea Sim Cham Reun Roth Secondary School, where Muslims make up nearly 40 percent of its students.
Hijab is an obligatory code of dress for Muslim women.
Inclusive
The government decision drew cheering from Cambodian Muslims.
"This shows that the government doesn't want to discriminate against Muslim students and will show people that there are a lot of Khmer Muslims within the education system," said Zakaryya Adam, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Cults and Religion.
Abdulhalim Kasim, a Muslim student at Norton University, said the decision comes in the right time for female Muslim students.
"While it doesn't make any difference to me because I am a man and can wear whatever Khmer students wear, girls need to wear scarves over their faces," he said.
Kasim said the decision also has broader implications.
"The fact that the government will allow us to wear our traditional clothes means it accepts all religions [and] it will make it easier for Khmer Muslims to study."
There are estimated 700,000 Muslims in Cambodia, making up 5 percent of the country's 13 million population.
Cambodian Muslims are generally located in towns and rural fishing villages on the banks of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers and in Kampot Province in the south.
17 comments:
German philanthropist funds modern hospital in Kampot
Written by Hor Hab and Brendan Brady
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Kampot Province
Phnom Penh Post
Facility to bring competent health care to Cambodia's southern coastal region, where there is little hope in medical emergencies
CONSTRUCTION is nearly complete on a full-scale pediatric hospital in Kampot funded privately by a German doctor in the name of his deceased daughter.
The Sonja Kill Memorial Children's Hospital is 80 percent constructed and should be open by next June, according to the governor of Kampot, Thach Korn, who said the modern facility would be a major boost to the entire southern coastal region's health care services.
The bill - around US$8 million for the facilities and $6 million for medical equipment - has been footed by Winfried Kill, a retired doctor , according to Yos Phanita, the vice director of Phnom Penh's Cambodian-Russian Friendship Hospital who is also a representative of the Sonja Kill Foundation Cambodia.
The hospital, situated near the base of Bokor Mountain, is being constructed on seven hectares of land provided by the government.
Its 38 buildings - 26 for patients and the rest for house staff - will include 124 patient beds plus surgery facilities and a maternity ward. Construction started in March 2007, he said.
The facility will require a staff of around 140, including doctors, nurses and custodians, he said, adding that as many as 20 foreign doctors would be brought in.
"The purpose is to meet the high demand of healthcare for children and women," he said. Cambodia's maternal mortality rate has for the past five years hovered at around 472 deaths per 100,000 live births - the highest in the region, according to the Ministry of Health.
Free service
Yos Phanita said the hospital's services would be free of charge and of the highest quality possible.
"[We] built the hospital in the south of Kampot because there isn't a major hospital there yet. It will be very good for people living around the southern coast because they will not have to go to Phnom Penh anymore."
But he added that the new facility would not be enough to fill the gap in health care provision to all children and mothers in the region. "They need three times more than this."
Some 85 percent of Cambodia's people live in rural areas, but most hospitals and health personnel are in urban areas. Pen Por, who lives near the Sonja Kill Hospital, said that when his children had serious health problems in the past he and his wife were forced to make the three-hour trip to Phnom Penh and even travelled to Vietnam in a couple of cases. "But now I don't think these trips will be necessary any more," he said.
Sin Somuny, executive director of the healthcare NGO MEDICAM, said, "a hospital with those kinds of resources really makes a difference" and is "especially important in the countryside".
Many thanks, to Dr. Kill for his generosity, we are grateful to you.
Money can buy khmer souls. Khmer are THE race that lacks of nationalism. The legacy of its distinction as a nation, commencing from greed and power-struggle. I surprise that Khmer still survive till present day!
Thank you Allah for giving us great leader like PM Hun Sen!
Hun Sen creates racial problems and communautarism by encouraging muslim Cambodians to wear the veil.They will behave like Arab women and will distance from Khmer compatriots.
I predict that the measures will create conflicts between Khmers and Khmer Islam.
What the idea of Laicity at Scool? Scholl is not a religious facility, but a facility for all students.
The hijab must be banned> Even in Turkey where people are muslim, students don't wear the hijab.
Hun Sen is playing a dangerous demagogy!He will be beheaded by the Extremist Islamics born from this authorisation.
I agree with you. Hun Sen is creating a division of mind between Khmers by allowing the Hijab.
You will see hatred between Khmer and Khmer muslim just because of this religious sign at School, which must be a laic facility for all students.
God will help his faithful children learn to be the best Khmer leaders of all times.
And God blesses PM Hun Sen!
Mr 11:21 am.
In 1988 I visited Tunisia. I visited Schooland Hospitals.Female students spoke fluently French and didn't wear the Hijab.They even shook our hands and askedus: Where are you from?
They are no need to be very conservative and very religious. The Communism, although very bad,had emanciped muslim women in the former sovietic Mulsim States. Now those muslim women are modernised, 95% litterate and don't wear this " disgust" scarf, which hides their feminine beauty.
11:21 AM
The only person that bless Hun Sen on the earth died in 1750.
I respect our Compatriot Cham or Khmer Islam. But I feel frustrated that, through financial aid from Arab Countries,they are now more
" Arab" than Cambodian. Not for long they will keep the beard and bourka.....and become a people apart Cambodian people....in a country that had hosted them after the destruction of Champa by the Viets and that considered them as a Khmer "a part entiere".
Good to see PM Hun Sen encourages people to preserve their culture and religion.
Can't say the same thing for the US though. Over there, they are not allowed to pray in school. Their stores and malls are not allowed to decorate Xmast ornaments. Congress and Senate are not allowed to pray before the starting any session. The US is slowly turning into a real Evil Empire, especially Ah Khmer-US living in there.
Thank You PM!
But the history of the khmer empire said also as the khmer king Suryavarman II that constructed Angkor Wat fought and pushed back several attacks and invasions of the Chams conducted by the prince cham Siamese converted to the Islam, Ramadhipati Ier. And this is Jayavarman VII. that crushed definitively the armies of the champa. And after the death of Jayavarman II , Khmer empire fell definitively in decadence and break-up facing the attacks of Ramadhipati II's armies descending Ramadhipati I, and the Siamese kings. The Ramadhipathi are not something else that the Moslem minorities of the south of the thailande and the khmer chams today.
Afterward political, strategic alliances and military officers, the kingdom of Cambodia is obliged to make territorial concessions to the countries neighbors.
All these problems not peacefully resolved meet again to day to Cambodia Kingdom.
May Allah reward Well to Our PM.Hun Sen .
1:13,
Perhaps, a school is consider a place to study NOT a temple for anyone to worship? Can you imagine if worship is to allowed in public school? Due to the student religious difference, that would mean taking alot of time disrupting the everyday activities that a student should be learning instead of worshiping. Please do not mix the term "school and temple" together.
Bullshit, 1:09, everyone prays to do better in whatever they are doing. Boxer prays to win the match. Astronaut prays for a safe trip. The sick pray to get well ... Are you telling us that these people disrupting your life, motherfucker? mind your own business, scumbag!
Just don't give them too much leeway, or else they start bombing if you refuse their rights. Islam is the must fundamentalist religion in the world . Even more so than Evangelical Christians, which is scary.
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