(The Washington Times) – Islamist extremists are targeting the city’s universities by threatening and even attacking female students who wear Western-style fashions, setting off bombs on campuses and demanding that classes be segregated by sex. At least 1,000 of an estimated 3,000 women who want to postpone their studies for fear of violence will be granted leaves of absence, a student affairs official here said. Guards at al-Kindi University in Baghdad last week arrested a man carrying nearly 10 pounds of TNT in a bag. “The terrorist admitted that he belongs to an Islamic group,” university security chief Sameer al-Sumaidai said. “When we asked him about the one who sent him, he replied, ‘It is God who sends me.’ Pamphlets found on campus declared: “If the boy students don’t separate from the girl students, we will explode the college. Any girl student who does not wear a veil, we will burn her face with chemicals.” Even non-Muslim women, who are not normally expected to cover their heads in a strict Islamic society, do not escape the threats, students said. Vian Kiryakus, a Christian electrical-engineering student at Baghdad University , wears a veil outside the college when waiting for her father to give her a ride home. “I have no choice but to wear the veil; the terrorists keep watching and targeting the unveiled girl students,” Miss Vian said.
