U.S. to defend Muslim girl wearing scarf in school

CNN Washington Bureau ^ | 03/30/04 | Terry Frieden

[coffeebreak]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Justice Department announced Tuesday the government's civil rights lawyers have jumped into a legal case to support a Muslim girl's right to wear a head scarf in a public school.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Alex Acosta said government lawyers would support 11-year-old Nashala Hearn, a sixth-grade student who has sued the Muskogee, Oklahoma, Public School District for ordering her to remove her head scarf, or hijab, because it violated the dress code of the Benjamin Franklin Science Academy, which she attended.

The girl continued to wear her hijab to school and was subsequently suspended twice for doing so. The family appealed the suspensions, which were upheld by a district administrative hearing committee.

Her parents filed suit against the Muskogee School District last October.

On Tuesday the federal government filed a motion in a federal court in Muskogee to intervene in support of Nashala's position.

[blueriver]

It is her religion and her exercise thereof is protected by the US Constitution.

I contend to you that no one is denying this girl her right to practice her religion. She is free to attend any religious school she wants to attend. No one is forcing her to go to public school. Religious practices have no place in the public school. That is why this country has so many private religious schools. If a parent wants their child to have a school cater to their religious requirements then they send them to religious schools. Many catholic parents send their kids to catholic schools for this purpose alone. Why should this girl be any different from them? Where do you draw the line on what a school has to do to accomadate every childs religion. A school should be able to make rules that help it maintain order in a classroom. If hats are a distraction and or cause another child to not be able to see the blackboard then the scoold should have the ability to set a policy that restricts hats. They should not have to be concerned with religious requirements as they are not a religious instituition.

[spunkets]

"The Founding Fathers founded the country for their Christian progeny. "

The Founding Fathers were interested in Freedom and rights protection, not in establishing any particular set of authoritarian rules. This country belongs to it's citizens. The citizens that are their progeny. It does not belong to the Christians.

[CobaltBlue]

Why does anyone care what somebody wears?

Hmm. You mean, why should your boss care how you dress at work? Or, why should you care whether your surgeon wears a sterile scrub suit?

Or, why does the Fashion Police say that stripes don't go with plaid?

Why does your mother care whether you wear clean underwear?

[FreeReign]

The dress code in the Muskogee schools prohibits students from wearing hats, caps, bandannas or jacket hoods inside school buildings.

The Muskogee schools will need to prove why it is necessary to prohibit all students, irregardless of religion, from wearing hats, caps, bandannas or jacket hoods inside their buildings.

If they can show that this prohibition is necessary, then the wearing of such items including religious head-wear should be banned. Else, all wearing of such items should be allowed.

[CobaltBlue]

Actually, if you read what the Founding Fathers actually wrote, they believed in religious freedom for Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Catholics, as well as Protestants.

[spunkets]

"No one is forcing her to go to public school."

Public schools were established for the purpose of educating the children of it's citizens w/o regard for their ability to pay. They are open to all.

"Religious practices have no place in the public school."

Each and every citizen has the right to be unimpeded in their exercise of religion by any citizen, or the government. What has no place and is a crime is what you advocate, which is to violate religious rights in direct opposition to the plain English wording of the 1st Amendment.

"Many catholic parents send their kids...

Blah, blah, blah... That is not exercise of religion, it is religious education.

[CobaltBlue]

I believe that the teacher who wore the cross was represented by the Rutherford Institute, but if she had asked the ACLU to represent her, they probably would have.

You actually have to ask people to represent you, most of the time.

[mtntop3]

The apparent modesty of the head-wear of both the Muslim and the Amish girl is not unpleasing. Modesty and decorum have traditionally been prime determinants in evaluating what is proper for school wear. We can use a little modesty and decorum. More than a little. The 100 percent religion-removal (ACLU) and PC fanatics, along with those of "deadly toy orientation", have introduced a poisonous element into our classrooms - into all our lives. May children be allowed to have - a childhood. May the world see that this is truly the land of freedom, including that of religion.

[Weimdog]

If you insist, but you are mistaken -

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community. In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testaments.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon. Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that 'scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane'. To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females' aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months' imprisonment.

By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America. Some younger Muslim women, especially Western converts, were duped into believing that the neo-hijab was an essential part of the faith. (Katherine Bullock, a Canadian, so loved the idea of covering her hair that she converted to Islam while studying the hijab.)

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2003-weekly/you-02-09-2003/

[CobaltBlue]

Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 22 November 1, 1784 - November 6, 1785 - Richard Henry Lee to James Madison: " I fully agree with the presbyterians, that true freedom embraces the Mahomitan [Muslim] and the Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Xn [Christian] religion."

[easonc52]

Maybe her parents want to sue somebody over this, but in reality, I don't see why anybody cares what a kid wears to school. She may not even know what kind of controversy she's causing...

[CobaltBlue]

This girl has a Constitutional right to wear to school, as her conscience dictates, hijab, a cross, a Star of David, a red dot in the center of her forehead, a rosary, a scapular, and any other religious symbol.

This country was founded on religious freedom, and religious freedom will ever be its bedrock.

[Fedora]

The Constitution protects free religious exercise except where Establishment is being violated. Where precisely in the Constitution is "religion" defined in a manner which excludes Islam?

As I'd argue it, the key point at issue is what the Constitution means by "religion" in the phrase "establishment of religion". The context of this phrase includes the wider context of the Declaration of Independence, which opens with references to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and to men being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". This, as may be verified in the writings of the framers of the Constitution, is referring to the 18th-century concept of natural law and the underlying tradition of natural rights extending back through John Locke to Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, the Sermon on the Mount, and ultimately, the Ten Commandments. In this tradition the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are considered to embody certain principles which are the foundation of a just social order. These principles are common to Judaism and Christianity and are alluded to in the Declaration of Independence's phrase "unalienable Rights", which are the "Rights" the "Bill of Rights" is enumerating. This is not excluding non-Christian religions (cf. my Post #24); it is, however, excluding religious practices based on principles which radically depart from the principles common to Judaism and Christianity that derive from natural rights (thus, for instance, to take an extreme example, the Constitution would not protect a religious practice involving ritual murder). Also, the Bill of Rights is addressing states' rights issues and protecting the right of individual states not to have their established religions infringed upon by the federal government (keep in mind that the states originally had established religions), whereas the legal argument in the case in question is attempting to have the federal government impose Islam on a non-federal level of the educational system. Note that I am not arguing the Constitution only protects Christianity; I am arguing that Judaism and Christianity are the paradigm of what the Bill of Rights protects, and when Islam attempts to claim rights which step outside that paradigm, it steps outside the protection of the Constitution. Christians do not have a Constitutional right to violate school dress codes--why should Islam?

[easonc52]

I wish people would get over this getting rid of God everywhere. I was raised as a Seventh-Day-Adventist, although I'm not inclined to that anymore, but I don't deny anyone their own beliefs.

[CobaltBlue]

She's not causing any controversy. It's the misinformed and/or ill-intentioned school officials who are causing the controversy.

They'd be far happier in France or Germany, which ban religious symbols in public places, regardless of whether they are public or private displays. In France and Germany, school children in public schools can't even wear a necklace with a small cross on it. And a teacher shouldn't even dream of it.

[spunkets]

"This headgear was invented in the early 1970s"

I'm not fishing for links. I will just state that the headgear is ancient. It appeared in the art and writings of many from all over that region. It was cultural and Islam adopted it as a religious tradition long before the claims of that article. I saw with my own eyes long before that time what they wore. It's ancient.

[Destro]

In France and Germany, school children in public schools can't even wear a necklace with a small cross on it. And a teacher shouldn't even dream of it.

Correction: I don't think Germany has any such law and the French law forbids large super sized crosses like say a rap performer wears. Small personal crosses are allowed in public schools in France.

[blueriver]

Public schools were established for the purpose of educating the children of it's citizens w/o regard for their ability to pay. They are open to all.

She can attend or not, it is her choice, again no one is forcing her and therefore no one is limiting her constitution rights.

Each and every citizen has the right to be unimpeded in their exercise of religion by any citizen, or the government. What has no place and is a crime is what you advocate, which is to violate religious rights in direct opposition to the plain English wording of the 1st Amendment.

We all have the "right" to practice religion. The question is do we all have the right to practice our religion where ever and whenever we please? If so are instituions prohibited to set up rules and regulations unless it passes the religious police? Once schools are required to have to take into consideration religion over school matters the public school system is going to be unable to make any rules.

... That is not exercise of religion, it is religious education

It is both.

[CobaltBlue]

I was told this by people who live in France and Germany. If they were wrong, I apologize for spreading erroneous information.