The freedom to public manifestation of religion in worship, observance, practice and teaching has been guaranteed under the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia. Despite the constitutional guarantee for publicly expressing one's religious beliefs, there are contestations and rising tensions between the government and the Muslim community as the government is initiating bylaws to restrict these rights in public places. Limitations over the display of religious symbols and worship have been implemented in educational institutions since 2008 where the Ministry of Education (MOE) introduced a Directive that bans wearing niqab and congregational pray in all educational institutions. This paper explores the contestation between the Muslim community and the government over issues of public manifestation of religious belief. It mainly focuses on two aspects of this right - veiling and congregational pray in educational institutions. It examines about the constitutionality of the 2008 Directive and its compatibility with the principle of secularism and the tenets of the Ethiopian multinational federal system. In so doing, I scrutinize it from a historical, constitutional, religious and human rights perspectives. Accordingly, it seeks to answer how the Ethiopian policy of secularism in educational institutions and the bans on religious clothes and congregational pray limits the religious rights of Muslims and how it perpetuates the historical marginalization of Muslims in education. Leaving aside the debates whether niqab is mandatory or not, the paper argues that, prohibiting niqab-wearing students for attending education is a breach of the constitutional and human rights of such individuals guaranteed under international law. It is in violation of the fundamental rights of niqab-wearing students dictating them to unveil to receive their basic rights.