December 18th 2008
Heebie Hajibies – Muslims Not Getting With The Program
L
isa Valentine didn’t take her husband’s name – he’s Omar Hall. When confronted with a difficult situation, she swore at an officer of the court.
These are odd behaviors for a Muslim woman supposedly so devout that being ordered to remove her head scarf before entering court in Georgia made her feel “stripped of my civil, my human rights.” I thought Muslim women were supposed to be submissive, nearly invisible, even incapable of the rational thought required to talk and remember at the same time.
From the picture, you can see that this is no mere scarf. Its a large and flamboyant affair that clearly qualifies as headgear, and the courts in Douglasville, GA have rules that headgear is not allowed. Asking her to take off her hat may be a civil rights violation, but it does not strip her of human rights; those rights are on a decidedly higher plane.
Other religions have altered their religious requirement to not run afoul of U.S. laws. Sikhs are required by their religion to carry a small sword, a kirpan, on their hip, but they have foregone this requirement in light of needed U.S. security measures and have worked with TSA on an education program for screeners who confront a Sikh who has forgotten to pack his kirpan in his suitcase.
Marijuana use is a part of the Rastafarian religion, but in America followers of the religion realize that they cannot pursue this aspect of their religious beliefs in public without counsequences, and they’ve modified their behavior in order to comply with the norms of the culture that they’ve chosen to live in.
Even Islam has bent its religious traditions to avoid trouble in America. Animal sacrifice is a part of Islamic ceremony still, but after some run-ins with local authorities in the U.S. who were quick to slap animal cruelty charges of the offenders, the practice was either stopped or went underground. (BTW, check out this picture of two Muslims getting a cow ready for sacrifice on the Eid-al-Adha holiday. One is wearing traditional garb – like a hajib – and one is dressed in western clothes, and no one’s having a cow except the cow.)
Wearing a hajib is no more a mandatory requirement of Islam than is sacrificing animals; it is a custom that varies widely depending on the local culture (and degree of exploitation of women). Yet pushy Muslims, who insist on forcing their culture onto ours, have made it a cause celebre, and CAIR was on Valentine’s case seemingly in minutes, getting her sprung quickly from her 10-day contempt of court sentence and urging federal civil rights authorities to investigate this and other cases in Georgia.
Frankly, it’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot. If Valentine could get through the metal detector with her bad hair covered by headgear, she’s probably no threat. What’s she going to do, use it as a garrote? If that’s our fear, neck scarves will have to be banned next. But there are larger issues here – societal norms, respect for the courts, Muslim cultural intolerance – that are in play and put me on the court’s side, not Valentine’s.
Her civil rights may have been tweaked, but not her human rights. She must recognize that she is a member of a minority religion that, because of its own massive problems and the considerable violence it perpetrates in the name of its god, is very unpopular here and in most of the non-Muslim world. She needs to recognize that she’s going to suffer because she follows an unpopular religion, just as most evangelical Christians (myself included) have suffered because of their faith.
This is America and she’s free to fight for some perceived right to wear a hajib. But we’re free to fight back, and I hope we do.
(source)
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