When Malaysia itself barred the purdah — 1985
A Malaysian government ruling barred face veils for women in the civil service and Muslim university students. UPM suspended sixteen students for refusing to comply; five were barred from final examinations. PAS and ABIM offered the students free legal aid.
The restriction map on this site runs through Europe, Central Asia, Africa and South Asia. It has a Malaysian chapter too, and it is older than most of the others.
The ruling
In 1985, amid a visible rise in Malay Muslim women adopting full covering, face veils and gloves included, the Malaysian government imposed a ruling barring women in the civil service and Muslim students in universities from wearing the face veil.
Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) was the first (at that point the only) of the country's six universities to implement it. It suspended sixteen female students for refusing to comply, five of whom were barred from their final examinations in mid-May 1985. Civil servants had faced no action yet, but had been threatened with dismissal if they continued wearing the veil.
The student who answered in public
One suspended student, Ungku Faizah Ungku Mohsin, then 26, told the Malay press she had worn the veil since she was ten, that she regarded it as an Islamic requirement, and that she would not compromise with the authorities on the issue.
When rumours circulated that the suspended students were preparing legal action, two Muslim organisations volunteered free legal aid: PAS, whose vice-president Nakhaie Ahmad framed the party as bound to defend them, and ABIM, the Malaysian Islamic youth movement — both of which had opposed the government ruling.
Why this belongs on the restriction map
Two reasons. First, it breaks the assumption that veil restrictions are a European invention aimed at Muslim minorities: this one was imposed by a Muslim-majority government on its own civil service and campuses, decades before France legislated. Second, it is the missing backdrop to the Malay-world history covered elsewhere on this site — the 1980s revival that popularised niqab in Malaysia was met, at the time, with official restriction, not indifference.
Sources. UCA News, 28 May 1985
A single contemporaneous report; the ruling's exact instrument and its later fate have not yet been traced. Treat the outline as solid and the edges as open.