Shadowing Practice: Why Muslim Countries Are Banning the Hijab in Schools - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.

237 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

Every September, the start of the school year brings the same fight across the Turkic world,

and also in Tajikistan.

Devout families in the state square off over whether a girl

may wear a headscarf to class at school gates in western Kazakhstan and the Uzbek provinces and at Tajik universities.

This year, Azerbaijan joined the fight.

On September 21st, the cabinet administers issued a decree on what children may wear to public school.

The word hijab appears nowhere in the text, and nobody in Baku misread its target.

The region's leaders have never been coy about the stakes.

In 2012, Nur Sultan Nazarbayev declared that wearing Arabic hijabs

and sending our women back to the Middle Ages is not our path.

The fight also draws in the region's powers.

When Baku first tried the school ban in 2010, an Iranian Grand Ayatollah condemned it.

This month, the sharpest objections came from Turkey, Azerbaijan's closest ally.

The Islamist monthly Baran accused Baku of reviving 100-year-old Kamalist prohibitionism,

and the pro-government daily Yeni Akhip ran the story as its banner headline and the teachers of the U.S.

Soviet Union.

This is Tehran Research Center, hosted by the Yurtown Institute, where we break down the geopolitics of Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

If you're new here and want more analysis like this, please like, subscribe, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Now, let's get into it.

The decree completes a sequence that began in July, when Azerbaijan's parliament, D'Amelie Medjlis, amended the law in general education.

The amendment defines the school system as secular and grounded in national and universal values, and it binds pupils, teachers,

and parents to state dress requirements.

Decision number 309 supplies the mechanism.

Each school's pedagogical council rules on compliance, and parents answer for it.

National dress remains welcome at cultural events.

The decree also cleaned up a mess.

In February and March, school directors in Sumgayit, Mehdiabad, and elsewhere sent girls and headscarps home with no legal basis.

One school expelled 23 pupils in a single day.

When rights lawyers objected, the schools quietly relented.

But now, the next school director who sends a girl home will have regulations to point to.

What sets Azerbaijan apart from its Central Asian neighbors is how little demand there is for the headscarf in the first place.

Azerbaijan ranks among the least observant Muslim-majority societies in the world.

Gallup has placed it among the least religious countries anywhere, and only 1% of Azerbaijani Muslims told Pew that they attend mosque weekly.

Demand is concentrated in pockets of Shia observance, such as the town of Nardaran outside Baku, where Iranian influence runs deep.

When the education ministry first tried a school ban in 2010, protests broke out in Baku and Nardaran, and the Iranian Grand Ayatollah,

Nasr Meharam Shirazi, condemned it publicly.

The ministry backed down.

Demonstrators jailed after later protests became known as the hijab prisoners and a cause for Iran-aligned networks.

The decree has brought the fight back to the street.

Why?

Because of the government's rights.

The government's rights.

Girls and headscarves have been turned away at school gates in Baku, Sumgayit, and Jalilabad, and on October 6,

the government extended the dress rules to teachers, some of whom were told to uncover or resign.

Don't be afraid of you!

The protests that followed have been scattered rather than massive.

People's boycotting class in Baku's Balakhani settlement, and in Masali, families gathering at school entrances and clashes with school staff.

Some have turned violent.

Videos from protests show demonstrators forcing their way into school buildings and vandalizing school property.

On October 12th, the Interior Ministry announced 37 detentions and opened a criminal case for disrupting public order.

and videos posted from the protest.

Demonstrators chant .

A pledge to the hidden imam of Shia belief in the language of Iran's revolutionary rallies

and we will die before we give up the hijab.

The ideology and informative events will never stop.

It was before, but today in Azad Qarabağ, in the Azərbaycan, the movement was more difficult to get the attack.

The government's answer on air.

It was a student, a student, a student, a student.

And the government's attitude and the government's attitude and the government's

time of the world.

Tehran's interest is no secret, even to its own diplomats.

Javad Zarif, Iran's former foreign minister, put it this way.

Azerbaijan is a Shia majority state on Iran's border,

and Tehran has long cast itself as the guardian of Azerbaijan's Shia. In Baku,

the question of who decides what a girl wears to school comes down to who holds sovereignty over religious life in Azerbaijan.

Iran's hostility is predictable.

Turkey's reaction exposed the limits of the slogan the two governments use to describe their alliance, one nation, two states.

Islam, enemies, enemies!

Even before the decree, Istanbul MP Mustafa Yeneroglu, a former AKP lawmaker, had called the spring expulsion systematic and warned that

Turkey's own experience showed the path to be a dead end.

After the decree came the press campaign from Baran and Yeni Akit.

Within days, Emili Meclis' commission on foreign interference and Azerbaijan's media regulator

accused unnamed circles in Turkey of running a coordinated social media campaign using real

and fake accounts and targeted advertising to turn Azerbaijanis against their own government and against the alliance.

Both ask Ankara to act against the organizers.

Neither statement named the subject of the posts.

Baku has lodged complaints like this before.

Its ties with Israel have drawn sustained fire in Turkish media since the Gaza war.

In March, after a drone strike on Nakshaban that Baku blamed on Iran, a wave of Turkish posts accused Aliyev of doing Washington's and Israel's bidding.

Ankara's own disinformation center blocked 41 accounts and appealed for calm.

Turkish religious conservatives react this strongly because they recognize the policy.

The Turkish Republic enforced headscarf bans for decades.

Between 2010 and 2017, the AKP dismantled them in universities, the civil service, schools, the police, and in the military.

For the party's base, the campaign is a founding story of rights won from an overbearing secular state.

Turkish secularists tell the story the other way around.

They argue that the state owes minors a classroom free of religious identity markers,

and that the AKP used the language of rights to advance a political program.

Northern Cyprus put that argument to the test.

In March In March 2025, a middle school in northern Nicosia turned away a pupil and a headscarf.

Prime Minister Önal Öztel's government responded by amending school regulations to permit it.

Thousands marched under the slogan, Cyprus is secular and will remain secular.

The teachers union leader, Elma Ailem, called the change AKP social engineering.

A month later, Turkish Sybarates elected the opposition leader Turfan Erhuman, president over Ankara's preferred candidate.

In Nicosia and in Baku, defending the secular school has become a way to mark distance from Ankara without breaking with it.

In Central Asia, the pressure comes from below,

100

and the argument over the hijab is at the root of an argument over who defines national identity after the Soviet Union.

101

The region's states emerged in 1991, with Soviet-trained secular elites and populations whose

102

Islam had been largely hollowed.

103

The religious revival in large part arrived from abroad, through missionaries, Gulf-funded scholarships and later social media.

104

Governments built official spiritual administrations to train imams and issue rulings the state could accept.

105

Islam practiced outside those channels became a security matter, and dress became the most visible border between the two.

106

Nur Sultan Nazarbayi put it plainly in 2012, Wearing Arabic hijabs and sending our women back to the Middle Ages is not our path.

107

In 2024, Qasim Jamar Takayev told the national Kurultai

108

that the spread of black robes was a thoughtless imitation of foreign norms rooted in fanaticism.

109

That same year, Tajikistan passed a law banning clothing alien to national culture.

110

Since 2023, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan have all banned the face veil in public.

111

Each state promotes a national alternative the Kazakh Kameshek, the Kyrgyz Elytschek, a Yuluk,

112

the Uzbek Romal headscarf, a Ndopi skullcap,

113

the Tajik Atlas dress, and light scarf knotted at the nape that grandmother wore through the Soviet decades.

114

Every one of these governments gives the same answer.

115

The hijab is an import, modesty belongs to the national tradition, and the public school must remain secular.

116

That answer is under growing pressure because the hijab itself is gaining ground, above all among young Central Asians.

117

For them, it signals piety and modernity and a break with their parents' Soviet-inflected Islam.

118

Each September brings new standoffs at school gates in western Kazakhstan, in the Uzbek provinces, and at Tajik universities.

119

Turkey, Iran, and the Gulf monarchies all use mosques, scholarships, and religious media as instruments of soft power in the region,

120

but none of them mounts the kind of state-sponsored challenge Baku faces from Tehran.

121

The most durable secular models draw the line at the door of the state.

122

In Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, since its 2021 religion law, a woman may wear a hijab in the street,

123

at a private workplace, and in the mosque.

124

Religious practice is broadly protected so long as it avoids what the state defines as extremism

125

or incitement to ethnic or religious hatred.

126

The restriction applies to public school, the institution these states rely on to build a shared civic identity.

127

Kazakhstan has gone furthest in giving the secular school a constitutional footing.

128

The new constitution, approved by referendum in March and enforced since July, guarantees secular education everywhere outside religious institutions.

129

The rule it protects is a 2016

130

Education Ministry Uniform Order barring religious attire.

131

Since 2017, that order has produced a confrontation every September, concentrated in the more conservative

132

West and South of the country.

133

The courts have set terms.

134

In 2024, the Supreme Court held that a school may not deny a girl her education,

135

but also that the ministry sets the uniform and parents must comply with it.

136

Chekayev has said repeatedly that schools are places for acquiring knowledge, and the religious belief is a private matter.

137

This September tested the model.

138

Education Minister Julduz Suleymanova warned that private schools admitting girls in hijabs could lose their licenses.

139

She noted that the National Security Committee, the Cayenne Bay, sits on the Enforcement Commission.

140

The state Muftiyat replied that covering is obligatory for girls past puberty.

141

It proposed headscarves matched to the school uniform.

142

Then it deleted the post.

143

Oljas Kudebergenov, a former advisor to Tukayev, sided with the clerics.

144

The Times of Central Asia read the whole episode as a split inside the establishment,

145

with the religious camp arguing calmly and the secularists reaching for the security services.

146

The division inside the elite matters.

147

Yet the way it plays out makes the strongest case for Kazakhstan's model.

148

The dispute runs through a constitution, the courts, a ministry, and a muftiat that ultimately answers to the state,

149

and every side argues it in the open.

150

The secular state also commands a public that shares its instincts.

151

In Pew's survey, only 18% of Kazakhstan's Muslims said religion was very important in their lives.

152

That public has also watched the hijab promoted in ways that looked more like a marketing campaign than a religious awakening.

153

The influencer episode looks different up close.

154

In early 2023, several Instagram influencers with audiences in the millions, accounts built on luxury brands, beauty content, and beach photos,

155

adopted the hijab within weeks of one another and began posting religious content.

156

Kazakh media reported that bloggers had been offered money to cover.

157

The television host, Dinara Satchan, said bloggers had told her the sums were large.

158

Gulnara Bashkeneva, editor-in-chief of the news site Orda, said the synchronized change of lifestyles looked from the outside like a marketing strategy.

159

to organize their life, their orthodox religion.

160

her to cover again.

161

For many Kazakhs, the episode reinforced the suspicion that the hijab spread owes as much to money and fashion as to faith.

162

On the hijab itself, Uzbekistan looks like its neighbors.

163

It finds the face veil, bars the hijab from state schools, and permits only a light national headscarf tied to leave the chin uncovered.

164

On other religious questions, it has moved in the opposite direction.

165

Since 2016, Shevkat Mirziwev has restored the public call to prayer.

166

The security service's blacklist of suspected extremists has been cut from more than 17,500 names to about 1,350.

167

The ban on religious dress in public has been lifted.

168

The state has also made room for commentators and preachers whose views Uzbekistan's first president, Islam Karimov, would have treated as subversive.

169

Kamala de Nourabimov, among the country's most prominent political commentators, has praised Mirzioya for treating

170

Islam as a source of national unity.

171

He welcomed the appointment of an education minister open to headscarves in schools.

172

Abrar Mukhtar Ali, a preacher with some 1.1 million YouTube subscribers, has repeatedly provoked public outrage with his sermons on gender,

173

such as women like husbands who beat them.

174

He has held posts at both the official

175

Muslim board and the state's center of Islamic civilization.

176

When one of his statements set off a backlash, the center apologized for his remarks, then gave him a new position.

177

Tashkent co-ops the religious revival by bringing its loudest voices inside state institutions.

178

That gives officials standing to views on women's place that go well beyond anything in the school uniform rules.

179

Uzbek secularism holds firm at the schoolhouse door and grows more negotiable elsewhere.

180

Tajikistan has the widest gap in the region between its government and population.

181

Shortly after independence, The country fell into a civil war from 1992 to 1997

182

that killed tens of thousands and pitted the secular government against an Islamist-led opposition.

183

It remains the poorest of the former Soviet republics.

184

Remittances for migrant workers, most of them in Russia, are worth nearly half of GDP.

185

Religiosity was rising well before the state's harshest measures.

186

In Pew's survey from 2011 and 2012, half of Tajik Muslims called religion very important in their lives,

187

and 27% favored Sharia as state law.

188

Extremist influence reaches the country from several directions.

189

In 2015, Tehran received the exiled leader of the banned

190

Islamic Renaissance Party as a guest of honor.

191

Militant networks operate from across the Afghan border.

192

More than 1,300 Tajiks went to fight for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

193

Among them was Gulmurad Halimov, commander of Tajikistan's own special police, who defected in 2015 and became the group's minister of war.

194

Most of those recruits were radicalized as migrant workers in Russia.

195

All four gunmen charged in the March 2024 Kroka City Hall attack near Moscow were Tajik citizens.

196

A government with few resources is answered with force.

197

It barred the hijab from schools in 2007 and from public institutions in 2009.

198

It banned the Islamic Renaissance Party in 2015 and has closed more than 1,500 mosques since 2011.

199

In 2024, it outlawed alien clothing in public.

200

Private citizens face fines of about $730 more than four months average wages.

201

Officials, clerics and businesses face fines of up to five thousand dollars.

202

Women have been turned away from hospitals over their headscarves

203

and men have been forced to shape even as officials denied that any ban exists.

204

These measures have pushed religiosity out of public view.

205

They have done nothing to close the gap between a narrow secular elite and an increasingly devout society.

206

Turkmenistan has taken the question out of society's hands.

207

It needs no hijab law because it prescribes women's appearances directly.

208

Through the unpublished presidential recommendations, teachers, students, and civil servants wear national dress.

209

Since 2025, women working in Ashgabat have been told to wear yellow headscarves and dresses.

210

Turkmen women are effectively required to cover their hair as as long as the headscarf is the state's.

211

Kyrgyzstan sits at the opposite pole.

212

It is the only state in the region that allows the hijab in the classroom.

213

It also has the densest networks of Islamic schools and, in Pew's data, the strongest support for Sharia's state law at 35%.

214

Even Bishkek banned the face fail in 2025, citing the Mufti's ruling that it was a foreign trend.

215

Its tolerance in the classroom reflects a weaker state in a more religious society.

216

The face veil ban shows how quickly that tolerance narrows once the government decides the practice is foreign.

217

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan stand apart because their secularism rests on consent as well as force.

218

Baku has written it into statute and Erstenah into its constitution.

219

Both root disputes through courts and ministries.

220

Both publish the rules they enforce and both keep the restriction at the schoolhouse door while leaving religious life beyond it free.

221

Both also govern publics that largely serve the premise.

222

In Pew's survey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan recorded the region's lowest support for Sharia's state law at 8 and 10 percent.

223

Each has a vulnerability.

224

In Azerbaijan, it lies in enforcement, where security-first approach risks handing Iran-line networks the same grievance they cultivated after 2010.

225

In Kazakhstan, it lies within the elite a muftiat willing to contradict a minister in public

226

and a former presidential advisor willing to side with it, suggests the consensus is thinner at the top than the constitution implies.

227

The regional powers will test both.

228

Iran's interest in Azerbaijan's Shia has only sharpened since this year's war.

229

Turkey's challenge is subtler and harder to manage because it comes from an ally.

230

Ankara presents the Organization of Turkic States as a civilizational community,

231

and its religious institutions and pro-government media carry the AKP's model of public piety into the region.

232

Baku and Astana work closely with Ankara on energy, transport, and security, but neither lets a partner dictate its foreign or domestic policy,

233

and Northern Cyprus showed the same resistance in Turkey's closest dependency.

234

Both governments have concluded

235

that a girl's headscarf is their own business everywhere except the one building where the state is trying to make citizens.

236

Tehran, Ankara, and the families at the school gate will keep testing that line every September.

237

Thank you.

Download App

Everything you need to speak fluently

AI PronunciationScore every sentence

IPA PracticeMaster every sound

VocabularyBuild your word bank

Vocab GameLearn while playing

Scan QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

Recommend Video

160 sentences

UNCENSORED: should the West be suspicious of Islam? Jonathan Sacerdoti, at the Oxford Union

Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

167 sentences

1954 Debate on Communism part 2: Teenagers from Philippines (Johnny Antillon), Korea, India, Norway.

Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

439 sentences

When Is The “Right Time” To Wear The Tudung? (With Anna Belle Francis & Nabilah Khan) | Pantang EP7

Daily ConversationWorking Adults

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Muslim Countries Are Banning the Hijab in Schools”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: religious, hijab, secular, Baku. This video has 75 sentences and 3120 words to shadow. The speech runs for 24:18. The speaker talks at a steady 128 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 73% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
secular adjective	/ˈsɛkjʊlə/	Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical.
decree noun	/dɪˈkɹiː/	An edict or law.
protest noun	/ˈpɹoʊ.tɛst/	A formal objection, especially one by a group.
gate noun	/ˈɡeɪ̯t/	A doorlike structure outside a house.
uniform noun	/ˈjunɪˌfɔɹm/	A distinctive outfit that serves to identify members of a group, company, prison inmates, etc.
classroom noun	/ˈklɑːsɹʊm/	A room, often in a school, where classes take place.
mosque noun	/mɑsk/	A place of worship for Muslims, often having at least one minaret; a masjid.
blogger noun	/ˈblɔ.ɡəɹ/	A contributor to a blog (from weblog) or online journal.
veil noun	/veɪl/	Something hung up or spread out to hide or protect the face, or hide an object from view; usually of gauze, crepe, or similar diaphanous material.
argue verb	/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/	To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply.
elite noun	/ɪˈlit/	A special group or social class of people who have a superior social or economic status and attendant power, advantages, or privileges in society; a member of…
deny verb	/dəˈnaɪ/	To disallow or reject.
define verb	/dɪˈfaɪn/	To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
pupil noun	/ˈpjuːpəl/	A learner at a school under the supervision of a teacher.
accuse verb	/əˈkjuz/	To find fault with, blame, censure.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
back down verb	To take a less aggressive position in a conflict than one previously had, or has planned to have.
break down verb	To stop functioning.
clean up verb	To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
come down to verb	To reach by moving down or reducing.
give up verb	To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone).
play out verb	To play (a game etc.) to its conclusion.
run through verb	To summarise briefly.
set off verb	To leave; to set out; to begin a journey or trip.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have never been · has placed · has brought
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is concentrated · have been turned · were told

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 4 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'll, I'm, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: scholarship /ˈskɑːləɹʃɪp/, restriction /ɹɪˈstɹɪkʃən/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: repeatedly /ɹɪˈpiːtɪdli/, commentator /ˈkɑmənˌteɪtəɹ/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like secular, decree, protest.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Why Muslim Countries Are Banning the Hijab in Schools - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Download App

UNCENSORED: should the West be suspicious of Islam? Jonathan Sacerdoti, at the Oxford Union

This Book is The Reason Persian Still Exists | Shahnameh (Epic of Kings)

How Arab Jews Decide Israeli Elections

WW1's Forgotten Middle Eastern Theater

NYC, the nation’s largest school system, bans AI for students through 8th grade

Malala Yousafzai addresses United Nations Youth Assembly

What Is Islamic Psychology? Dr Francesca Bocca | Psychology and Islam

War Expert Reveals BRUTAL Truth About Iran’s Power Grab

Both Russia and America only pursue power, not principle, argues Moosa Haraj

Teaching in the US vs. the rest of the world