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Special beaches should be allocated for women in hijabs, Azerbaijani religious figure Haji Teyyar Huseynli said expressing his attitude towards men and women going to the same beach, Minval.az reports.

He said the women in hijabs should not get into the sea at the presence of men. “Unlike the other Muslim countries, the question of sorting separate beaches for men and women is not considered here. Special beaches for women with covered heads are created in Muslim countries. This question must be addressed in Azerbaijan, too. There are no women-only beaches in our country,” he said.
The religious figure also noted that men and women swim together in the beaches controlled by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan. “If a believer woman in hijab comes out of the sea and her garment fits on some parts of her body attracting the men’s attention, this is considered to be sin and haram from the religious point of view,” Huseynli said.

According to him, the women who get into the sea in clothes do not want anyone to look at their wet body. “There must be separate beaches for men and women. Men and women must not undress and walk in front of each other. I think women in hijabs can enter the sea only in a long distance from men,” Huseynli summed up.

In late 2010, the authorities in Azerbaijan banned hijabs at schools, which incited the Muslims to go on large-scale protests all over the republic. In January 2011, the leader of the Islamic party of Azerbaijan (IPA), Movsum Samadov, condemned the authorities’ ban on wearing hijabs. Samadov and six other IPA members were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in October 2011. Besides the IPA members, other believers who had taken part in the campaign “Freedom to hijab” were arrested in Azerbaijan. Baku police brutally dispersed the protest. In addition, the students wearing beards or hijabs were barred from entering Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in 2013.