US College Veil Ban Draws Fire

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CAIRO –- A Massachusetts college decision to bar the wearing of face veils is drawing fire from Muslim and non-Muslim civil rights groups as an illegal move that jeopardizes rights and targets religious freedom of Muslims in particular.

“It’s a very strange policy,’’ Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based civil liberties group the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Boston Globe on Wednesday, January 6.

“I don’t know where it came from. The only thing we can conclude is that it’s designed to specifically target Muslims.’’

The College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences issued a decision to banned students or others on its campuses from wearing clothing that obscures the face, including face veils and burqas worn by Muslim women.

College officials say that the rule, which went into effect January 1, is designed to promote safety and was imposed after a “periodic assessment of public safety policies’’ at the private college.

“This is another measure that public safety [officials at the college] wanted to implement to keep the campus safer,’’ Michael Ratty, a spokesman for the college, which has campuses in Boston, Worcester, and Manchester, N.H., said.

"It is not directed to any group or individual. It applies to all students and faculty."

But Muslims slammed the move as a form of religious discrimination for Muslims who believe they must cover their faces.

“I think they have two Muslim women wearing face veils, that made them feel uncomfortable and they had to do something about it,” said Hooper.

Even security activists like Jonathan Kassa, executive director of Security on Campus, a nonprofit that advocates for safer US college campuses, are not in favor of the rule, which they fear sacrificing rights in the name of security.

The majority of Muslim scholars believe that a woman is not obliged to cover her face but believe that it is up to women to decide whether to take on the face veil.

Illegal

Civil liberties groups and campus activists are also opposing the college decision as toeing the American constitution’s red-line of respecting religious freedoms.

It is “puzzling and possibly illegal,” Sarah Wunsch, staff attorney at the Massachusetts American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told The Globe describing the new rule.

Hooper affirmed he had not heard of any similar policies adopted at any other US college.

He added that a minority of Muslims believe that wearing clothes that cover the face is required, but that stopping them from practicing their faith remains "un-American."

“If this went to court I would feel comfortable the women would prevail because of the legal precedent that has been set.”

CAIR says that the ban should have an exemption for those who wear face veils for religious reasons, as is the case with some Muslim women, so that not to jeopardize religious rights.

As the college’s the policy includes a medical exemption, it should also include a religious exemption, Hooper noted.

“People should have the right to practice their faith as they see fit, not as others see fit.”