When a stern Russian schoolmistress in one of these poor villages said she would no longer admit girls in hijabs, she became a hero to many in Stavropol. The region’s leaders backed her up by introducing a uniform that does not allow girls to wear head coverings at all — a restriction that affects a population of around 2.7 million. Official statistics say around 10 percent of those residents are Muslim, though the real number may be double that because of unregistered migration, the International Crisis Group has reported.

Ali Salikhov, Amina’s father, said he would not be cowed into relaxing his views on the hijab.

“If they think that because something will happen with my daughter I will forget my religion — I say, no, religion is the goal of my life,” he said. “For 70 years they taught us that there was no God, but that passed, and this will also pass. In 20 years they will have forgotten that hijabs were ever forbidden in Russia.”

There are influential people on Mr. Salikhov’s side. A celebrity lawyer from neighboring Chechnya has agreed to represent four fathers of daughters now excluded from school, arguing that under Russian law only the federal authorities can curtail a citizen’s constitutional right to freedom of religious practice.

The lawyer, Murad Musayev, said he saw the Stavropol ban as an attempt to stir up tensions between groups that have been living together peacefully, perhaps with the intent of establishing eastern Stavropol as an ethnic boundary.

“When we discussed the social aspect of the problem with hijabs, one of our opponents said, ‘Let these people go back to their historical homeland, to their hijab homeland, and let them wear hijabs there,’ ” he said. “This is a pretty common opinion in Russia.”