Posted on 03/30/2004 7:21:30 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
ROFL! Well that I can't argue with :)
I assume they would take the same stand for kids wanting to wear their baseball caps to school when the it's against the rules?
And just an FYI, some schools are providing rooms for Muslim student to pray during Ramadam. (during school hours) A Christian student or teacher can't even pray outloud in a public school, let alone get a special room for it.
Unbelievable.
Go ahead and wear them on your head, if you'd like.
And you have evidence that this girl's family does?
It's a rebellious act. For a while there were a few around here that wore huge turbans, a different color for every day of the week. I hope they reach fulfillment even though those who rebel using a sartorical mode of expression don't often get much further than being a curiosity.
Mistreating the 90% is counterproductive, too. It only serves to push people in th 90% into the 10%.
Anyone who was assaulting women because they don't wear the hijab would quickly find themselves facing the full weight of the law. Or, in many cases, gunfire from the assaulted women or their friends and family.
I find the Hijab distasteful, but I find government banning people's peaceful religious practices even more distasteful.
No, he cannot. He is not free to use his official position, public funds or a public building to promote his religious beliefs. If Judge Moore wants to spend his free time promoting religion, more power to him. He cannot do so, however, on the taxpayer's dime.
I'm afraid this would get a bit long if I respond adequately to all of your points, so I'm going to focus on a few essentials, with apologies for not being able to do justice to your entire post. I appreciate your intelligent defense of your position; unfortunately to really get into the details of this would require referencing some case studies, biographical details of the Founding Fathers, etc., which would consume more time than I have at the moment. I will take your arguments into consideration for when I have more time to mull over them.
>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".
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the Constitution's context can be said to include a document it does not reference in any way,
But as I see it, this is a key question: what does the Bill of Rights mean by "religion"? There is no definition of "religion" in the Bill of Rights itself, so to define it we have to consider external documents, and the Delcaration is one of the most significant of these.
these are phrases that could be uttered by a Muslim without real fear of heresy.
Sure, and this is a point where the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam appeal to a common set of principles, which relates to the point I'm getting at: you can have religious toleration between Judeo-Christian groups and non-Judeo-Christian groups to the extent these groups agree upon some common set of principles. During the 18th century when the Constitution was written, such common principles were widely recognized to be embodied in such historic legal statements as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. To the extent practitioners of Islam abide consistenly with such principles, I see no problem with extending the same Constitutional protection that applies to Jews and Christians to Muslims. But I see a problem when a religion departs from these principles in a way that is radically inconsistent with them, because this undermines the basis upon which religious tolerance is founded. On a somewhat different issue--though related, because again there is an issue of consistency--I see a problem when Islamic legal activists (by which I have in mind primarily CAIR) try to use the Bill of Rights to secure preferential legal treatment. This of course gets to another point you bring up:
My point is that they do: dress codes should only exist to maintain order and the forbidding of passive displays such as crosses, yamulkes (sic) and Islamic veils represents protected free exercise.
This relates to the states-rights issue I raise in my other posts: I would argue that the Bill of Rights is merely prohibiting the federal government from enforcing/forbidding the expression of religion via the wearing of religious apparel; it is not giving the federal government the right to prohibit state/local or private educational institutions from enforcing dress codes; so when Islam claims protection under such an alleged right, I would argue that it is claiming a protection not even provided to Jews and Christians under the Bill of Rights, and is it thus claiming a right to preferential treatment by the federal government. Your counter-argument would appear to be along the lines of the argument you raise here:
The states may no longer have established religions as the Fourteenth Amendment applied the limitations of the Bill of Rights to all levels of government. I know some deny the validity of this, but it is as accepted a part of modern law as judicial review.
I would be one who would challenge the validity of this, and I would do so partly on the grounds that judicial precedent is only valid to the extent that it is consistent with the intent of the original legal document underlying the precedent in question. Here I would also (beyond the points you raise, so I'm not claiming this is what you're arguing, though I see it as a related issue) be taking issue with the legal realist/critical legal school of legal philosophy, which I feel is the school of legal philosophy underlying CAIR's position on how the Bill of Rights applies to Islam.
Rather than pandering to the anti-Islamic bigotry of the ignorant that is clear from some of the other posts in this thread (not yours), I would think that Christian organizations would support this girl.
I support the girl as a person, but I do not support her lawyers' legal argument.
Again, I appreciate the discussion, and I will take your arguments into consideration.
Constitutionally, there is no real way to do so.
That was wrong, too. She shouldn't have been insulted because of who her father was. Likewise, this girl is probably just a pawn, and shouldn't be insulted for her looks.
Even if you disagree with someone- like Rosie O'Donnell- you should leave appearance out of it. Conservatives are supposed to stand for judging the person on their merits. We are better than the liberals with their "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot" techniques.
No. I'm arguing that the Founders' principles of religious tolerance were originally conceived with reference to a Judeo-Christian paradigm of "religion", and any extrapolation of those principles to religions other than those expressly tolerated during the Founders' time should be consistent with the paradigm originally intended by the Founders. In other words, for instance, it would be consistent with the intent of the Founders to grant Muslims the same freedom from federal coercion granted to Jews and Christians; it would not be consistent for the federal government to coerce state/local or private Judeo-Christian educational institutions to abide by Muslim rules.
She needs a friggin viel [sic]
Oh my gosh, how evil of you two! She's a little girl. And I think she's a little cutie! Shame on you both!
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