As the hijab row in Karnataka has again been stoked by the video released by al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri praising Muslim student Muskan Khan the student who stood against alleged hecklers, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said it is expected that al Qaeda will not understand the significance of uniform but Indian Muslims will. Supporting the government’s hijab ban which was upheld by the Karnataka high court, the Assam CM said if religious clothes are not barred, then educational institutions will become a platform for the display of religious behaviour.

“If you wear hijab, I will wear something else (it will become an idealogy), then school and college will become a platform for the display of religious clothes and religious behaviour. So, how can then school and college continue (with permitting hijab)? That is why the term uniform came so that there’s no difference between Hindus and Muslims. There is no difference between poor and rich,” Sarma said, as reported by ANI.

“Al Qaeda will never understand but I am sure that Indian Muslims will understand that we have to wear uniforms. Once you finish your school and college, you come back to your home and whatever you want to wear, you wear. I am sure that Indian Muslims are with the judiciary,” he said.

Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri issued an 8.43-minute clip in which he praised Muskan Khan whose video of resisting a group of boys chanting Jai Shri Ram went viral. “May Allah reward her for exposing the reality of Hindu India and the deception of its pagan democracy,” Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, said. “… We must shake off the delusions that confound us… we must stop being deceived by the mirage of the pagan Hindu democracy of India, which, to begin with, was never more than a tool to oppress Muslims,” he said.

The video proves that “unseen hands” were there behind the hijab row, Karnataka home minister Araga Jnanendra said, while Muskan’s father distanced from the al Qaeda chief’s statement. He said his family is living peacefully in India and Zawahiri’s comments are wrong. “We don’t know anything about it (video), we don’t know who he is. I saw him today for the first time. He has said something in Arabic… We are all living here with love and trust like brothers,” he said.