After the story of a student being forced to wear a headscarf by school went viral on the internet, the Indonesian Government banned schools from imposing religious attire restrictions on students. The 16-year-old girl’s story went viral after she was forced to wear the Muslim headscarf in spite of having a different religious belief.

The Indonesian government gave all the schools a 30-day grace time to revoke any barbaric religious rules as such. Indonesia, in spite of being a Muslim-majority country, recognizes other religions officially and amended laws to protect the religious beliefs of diverse people.

Nadiem Makarim, Minister for Education and Culture of Indonesia said the choice of wearing religious attire was “an individual’s right… it is not the school’s decision”.

In the video, the official insisted that the school had a rule that all female students, including non-Muslims, must wear the headscarf according to school rules.

“Almost every day, my daughter has been summoned for not wearing a headscarf, and her answer is that she is not Muslim,” Elianu Hia, the father of the girl, told BBC News Indonesia.

“If I (force) my daughter to wear the headscarf, I will be lying about my daughter’s identity,” Mr Hia added. “Where are my religious rights? This is a public school after all.”

The school’s principal later apologized at a press conference and said the student would be allowed to dress according to her own religious beliefs.

‘Obey Jesus or Hellfire’, Angry Pastor Warned Students of MCCC

December 2019

A regular day at the Mercer County Community College in New Jersey was interrupted when Aden Rusfeldt, a Christian preacher, along with two other followers started giving hate speech within the campus premises around 12:45 PM. They held signboards with the phrase “Obey Jesus or Hellfire” printed in bold along with other inappropriate terms against the LGBTQ and non-Christian community. Rumsfeld is apparently the head of Key of David Christian Center, a non-denominational Christian Church in Philadelphia.

He also started shooting impertinent questions to student groups about abortions and other sensitive topics that quickly agitated them to raise their voices against him. “I don’t hate you guys. If I hated you, I would have stayed at my job today and made money,” he said when one onlooker accused him of giving hate speech.

Though two campus security guards and a cop from the West Windsor Police Department arrived within minutes of the commotion, they weren’t able to clear the scene because of the current college policy. Instead, the cop started playing songs at top volume from the police vehicle to cut down the hatred spread by Rumsfeld.

MCCC is a public campus and hence the security guards weren’t able to drive away from the preachers. Thankfully, none of them were hurt during the turmoil and the 3 finally left the campus by 3 PM.