NEW DELHI: Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan on Saturday said that the ongoing Hijab row in Karnataka was not a controversy but a conspiracy. The governor alleged that there was an attempt to remove Muslim girls from the mainstream of society. The governor also said that girls maintained a higher standard of education.

The governor said the hijab was not mandatory in Islam. According to him, it was not right to associate Hijab with Islam like turban is associated with the Sikhs. "In Sikhism, the turban is considered essential to the religion. However, there is no mention of Hijab in the Quran," he said. He also said that students should obey the rules of educational institutions.

Earlier, Arif Mohammed Khan had said that there were instances of women refusing to wear the veil when one traces the history of Islam. He had also narrated the story of a young woman, said to be a relative of the Holy Prophet, to prove his point.

''I will tell you just one quote... A young girl, who was brought up in the household of the Prophet himself... and she was the niece of the wife of the Holy Prophet. She was proverbially beautiful...,'' he said. ''This is what history says... read it,'

Quoting the story, he said when the woman's husband was the then Governor of Kufa in medieval times, she was chided for not wearing a hijab.

What she said was that God had made her beautiful and the almighty had placed His stamp of beauty on her, the Governor said.

''She said I want people to see my beauty and see the grace of God in my beauty... And be thankful to God... This is how the women of the first generation (of Islam) behaved. That's all I want to say,'' Khan said.