Amir Tejo, Sidoarjo, East Java – A nurse in East Java is at risk of being fired for wearing a Muslim headscarf while on duty, in what her husband calls a clear case of religious discrimination.
Nurul Hanifah, who has been a nurse at the Delta Surya Hospital in Sidoarjo district for the past seven years, already received two warning letters about the scarf, or jilbab, according to her husband, Mohammad Fahmi.
Labor laws stipulate that an employee may be dismissed after receiving three warning letters.
Fahmi said on Tuesday that Nurul only started wearing the jilbab full time after they returned from the hajj to Mecca. Previously, Nurul had only worn the headscarf outside of work to comply with the hospital's dress code.
"She reasoned that it was part of her faith, even more so now that she'd been on the hajj," Fahmi said. "So it's embarrassing that they've taken issue with it."
Speaking to officials at the Surabaya Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), Fahmi said he would file a complaint before the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
He also said he would lobby to get the hospital to revise its dress code, which prohibits health workers from wearing the jilbab due to hygiene concerns.
The Muslim headscarf normally covers the hair, ears and neck, as well as the shoulders, but not the face. "The fact is, lots of female employees at that hospital wear a jilbab but they're afraid to speak out for their cause," Fahmi said.
LBH director M. Syaiful Aris said the case was a "serious one" because a ban on the jilbab was considered a human rights violation.
Aris said wearing the jilbab was a way of expressing faith and it should be every Muslim woman's inviolable right to wear one. He said this right was protected under the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"We demand that Komnas HAM launch a probe into rights violations by Delta Surya Hospital," he said.
He also criticized the Sidoarjo labor department for failing to treat Nurul's case as a religious rights issue.
"The manpower office has tried to oversimplify the case as a run-of-the-mill employment issue and thus has failed to see it as a deeper problem of normative violations [to religious rights]," he said.
However, Dawam Wahab, president director of the Delta Surya Hospital, defended the dress code, saying it had been implemented for several years and had even been approved by district authorities.
No employee has complained about the dress code since its launch, according to Dawam. He also said workers were made aware of the rules prior to starting there.
"When we hire them, there's an agreement that they must only wear the uniforms provided while at work and that jilbabs are not allowed," he said.
Dawam said the hospital was open to allowing female employees to wear the Muslim headscarf, although its board of directors had already rejected the proposal before. "We just need some time to decide this," Dawam said. "We'll try taking the issue up again with the board."