Tag: headscarf

A convenience-store chain in Richmond, Virginia says it has changed its practice of asking customers to remove hoodies and headgear after a Muslim woman complained of being denied service because of her headscarf.

A spokesman for Fas Mart said the employee “was just doing what she was trained to do, which was to make sure that the face of this customer was visible for purposes of our security cameras and for the safety of our workers and other customers.”

He also said the store employs Sikhs who wear turbans and Muslims who wear headscarves.

Tralesha Faison returned to the store Wednesday and received an in-person apology from its manager. But, she said, “Not only does the manager of the store have to apologize, but the whole full company does.”

Faison said she is considering suing the company.

Europe’s human rights court has thrown out a complaint by two French Muslim girls who were expelled from their school for refusing to remove their headscarves during sports lessons.

France, which takes secularism in state schools very seriously, passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class.

“In many Muslim countries, the veil is not obligatory,” he said adding that “it is important that it does not become a uniform, that is a form of reverse discrimination, where only those who wear the veil are considered Muslim.”

A lawyer representing a Muslim woman who sued a judge for dismissing her small-claims court case after she refused to remove her veil said he’s prepared to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.