A Muslim teenager in Tulsa says she was interviewed for a job at the popular clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch but was told the hijab she wears for religious reasons did not fit the store’s image, Tulsa World reports.
Samantha Elauf, 17 at the time of the June, 2008 incident, did not get the job.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against the retailer for allegedly not hiring a Muslim teenager because she wears a hijab, a religiously mandated head scarf. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, modified in 1991, as the basis for the action:efendant refused to hire Ms. Elauf because she wears a hijab, claiming that the wearing of headgear was prohibited by its Look Policy, and, further, failed to accommodate her religious beliefs by making an exception to the Look Policy,” the lawsuit states.
Elauf went to the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma, which helped her file a complaint with the EEOC in Oklahoma City.
The Civil Rights Act protects people from discrimination based upon religion in hiring and in the terms of their employment, an EEOC press release says.
This isn’t the first time the store’s image policy has been called into question. In 2004, the EEOC waved the Civil Rights Act, saying the retailer had adopted a restrictive marketing image that limited the hiring of minorities, who did not conform to the image: he company reached a settlement with the EEOC and private parties in which it agreed to pay $50-million and was enjoined from discriminating against job applicants based on race, color and national origin; discriminating against women because of gender; and denying promotional opportunities to women and minorities.
EEOC general counsel Eric Dreiband said at the time that the retail industry “needs to know that businesses cannot discriminate against individuals under the auspice of a marketing strategy or a particular ‘look.’”
Should parents allow their Muslim teens to be assimilated into Western culture and allow their religious observances to slide? You know, so they’d “fit in” with their peers and have an easier time of things overall?
Rewind to the tragic murder of Aqsa Parvez, the 16-year-old who was attacked in the Mississauga, Ont. family home after clashing with her strict Muslim family over whether or not to wear the hijab.
And from July, 2008, Marwa Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian mother, was murdered in a German courtroom in Dresden. She was killed as she waited to give evidence against a German man of Russian descent who had been convicted for calling her a “terrorist” because she wore the hijab.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/09/18/abercrombie-amp-fitch-sued-over-muslim-teen-s-hijab.aspx#ixzz0TyIzsmSf
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