Religion & American Law

             Discrimination is a reality of societies unfortunately. People discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, and nation, among other factors. In this essay, I will write about the religious discrimination that a Muslim woman named Hani Khan experienced in San Francisco. This incident was discussed in the USAToday by Marisol Bello. Khan was a student, and she worked for three months in a clothing store as a stockroom clerk. Her supervisors offered her two options. Either she could remove her headscarf, known as a hijab, or she would be fired from her job, even though she wears the hijab as a religious observance. Eventually she refused to remove her scarf, and she was fired. Khan filed a federal job discrimination complaint against the company. Bello explains that "She (Khan) is among a growing number of Muslim women filing complaints of discrimination at work, in businesses or in airports." In fact, according to the news, in 2009, 425 Muslim women filed workplace discrimination complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These complaints were dismissed or resolved through mediation and lawsuit. 

            In this incident, the most important thing was that Khan's scarf became a problem for the company in view not because it was an Islamic observance, but because her wearing of the headscarf violated the company's "look policy" according to the company. "The policy instructs employees on clothing, hairstyles, makeup and accessories they may wear to work."

            My purpose in this essay is to ask a question: Is there a law which cannot be interpreted by different ways? Is there a law that everyone infers from this law the same meaning? I think definitely not. For example, everyone knows that in the United States religious discrimination is prohibited. However, the conception of discrimination is being interpreted by people. In this incident, the company claimed that it was not discriminating, but was only carrying out its policy about workers’ appearance. Furthermore, there is a similar issue between Bob Jones Universityand the International Revenue Service. Since the sponsors of the university believe that the Bible forbids interracial dating and marriage, they apply some rules on enrollment to the university. They follow their faith but the IRS considered these rules as racial discrimination.

           In addition, especially after 9/11, the United States developed a security policy which generally is intended to target Muslims. For example, in American airports Muslim women often have to remove their hijab, or have to undergo extra security checks. Nobody knows why security officers have to check Muslim women multiple times. Either they think that even though all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim, or they do not have such a prejudice and their purpose is only security issues. It is very difficult to determine in these kinds of cases whether the company is actually enforcing its workplace appearance policy or if it is in fact discriminating on the basis of religion. However, when I look at the result of the issue, I can see that a woman is prevented to get her scarf freely. If a Muslim woman has to remove her headscarf, how can the laws found neutrality or equality among citizens?  Is not it a kind of discrimination?   

            Finally, I offered here an example of religious discrimination which was carried out for another reason, the appearance policy of a company. There should be a way to prevent the using of such reasons. No company does have a right to determine a policy which causes a kind of discrimination because human rights are more important than companies' or countries' policies. Otherwise, every time people may be undergone such discriminations by different reasons. What is the cause of such a conflict, the structure of laws which is proper to be interpreted differently, or there is not sufficient and explicit clauses to stop these kinds of interpretations?