Khaberni - A large number of students at Homs University interacted with a campaign organized by a team known as "Tanasuh" which arranged a tour inside the university campus aimed at encouraging female students to wear the niqab and adhere to what is described as "legitimate dress".
Student sources at Homs University reported that the tour included the delivery of speeches with an educational nature focusing on religious concepts, including the call to "continue in obedience" and warnings against "defiance", in addition to emphasizing the choice of legitimate dress as a lifestyle, as it was considered by the campaign organizers a way to enhance the connection with religious values and to embed them in the students' lives.
The campaign did not go without criticisms and objections from students and observers who considered it a blatant interference in personal freedoms and an infringement on privacy especially since those promoting it spread their campaigns in a university campus that stands for openness and keeping up with modern times.
Student Mohammed from the Faculty of Arts at Homs University expressed concerns that these campaigns might take the form of indirect moral coercion on female students who are easily accused of deviating from religion and indulging in sin.
The same student warned of the danger of academic centers becoming a launchpad for imposing rigid behaviors contrary to science and its purposes and goals especially when they come from unofficial entities that are either blessed by official ones or overlooked in the best-case scenario, which puts personal freedoms, in his words, at the mercy of the wind.
In contrast, Khaled, a student at Homs University, asserts that no one has forced the female students to wear legitimate dress or imposed on them a behavior they do not accept, even if this behavior is stipulated in the law.
Khaled added that persuasion is the method adopted in this campaign, which its members undertake for the sake of God and devoid of any worldly interests, and it is non-binding and should not provoke anyone.
Syrians are experiencing significant controversy about public freedoms in the country and the level they have reached, between those who support these calls as legitimate activities consistent with freedoms and those who see in them an assault on personal freedom and its confiscation in the name of triumphing religion and sharia.
