Dearborn Heights, Michigan (IINA) - When Muslim Raghdaa Ali of Dearborn Heights attempted to walk into a cash advance store one day last summer to get a money order, an employee pointed to the Islamic headscarf Ali wore and said: “You need to take it off.”
As an observant Muslim woman who keeps her head covered in accordance with her faith, Ali tried to explain why she unables to remove her scarf. She was denied entry and told that unless she left, police would be called, Detroit Free Press reported.
“I felt really hurt that day,” recalled Ali, a native of Iraq. “I’m a U.S. citizen and should not be treated differently because of my religion. This is pure discrimination against hijab.”
Ali later filed a lawsuit, and now her case may come to trial this year in Detroit, illustrating growing tensions as Muslim women fight for the right to wear hijab in public places. It’s a conflict that has come up more frequently in recent years as a religious minority seeks acceptance of its faith.
In addition to Ali’s lawsuit, there have been several other cases involving Muslim women in metro Detroit and the U.S., which civil rights advocates say shows a pattern of misunderstanding about hijab. On Tuesday, Maha Aldhalimi sued the city of Dearborn, saying their officers forced her to take off her hijab for a booking photo after arresting her on parking violations.
In Michigan, several police departments of municipalities that have growing Muslim populations, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck and Canton are wrestling with how to deal with Muslim women who wear hijab when they are arrested. Police are asking them to remove their hijab for photographs and identification purposes, but Muslim women say they should be allowed to keep them on or at least have female police officers handle them. They note that the Secretary of State allows Muslim women to have on hijab for their drivers’ license photos.
“These are constitutional violations,” said Canton attorney Nabih Ayad, who has handled several hijab cases in recent years. “You have to respect the right to wear religious attire.”
Robert Sedler, a distinguished professor at Wayne State University Law School who teaches constitutional issues, agrees, saying that it appears the rights of Muslim women who wear hijab are being violated during police booking photos and in the Advance America case.
Ayad filed a lawsuit last month against the Oceana County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of Fatme Dakroub, a Muslim woman of Arab descent from Dearborn who wears hijab and was on vacation in the county with her family. On May 17, she was pulled over by police for allegedly speeding in a parking lot and was told her license was suspended, both of which Dakroub disputes.
Arrested and handcuffed, the officer took her to the station, where she “was asked to remove her headscarf in front of three male officers,” said the lawsuit, filed May 28 in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
Dakroub said she explained to the officers the “substantial religious significance of her headscarf and clearly told the officers that she did not want to remove her headscarf because of her religious beliefs.”
Akeel, who is Ali’s attorney in the Advance America case, said that “in my 17 years of practicing law, I have never seen such blatant discrimination in denying someone service because they choose to practice their faith.”
Akeel said this issue is not just important for Muslim women, but for other religious minorities with unique dress, such as a Sikh who wears a turban or an Orthodox Jewish man with a head covering.
“My hope is that they change their policies,” Ali said of Advance America. “I don’t wish for other women to be treated the way I was treated. ... We are all human. We should be treated the same.”
SM/IINA
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
No comments:
Post a Comment