A Muslim woman who was forced to remove her hijab by police in Michigan claims her religious rights were violated, and she’s hoping a civil rights lawsuit will ensure other women don’t have the same experience.
Malak Kazan, 27, is suing the police department and city of Dearborn Heights, a suburb of Detroit, after officers refused her request to keep her headscarf on while taking a booking photo. Her attorney Amir Makled filed the lawsuit in federal court Thursday.
“Malak has been very brave by going forward with this case,” Makled told The Huffington Post. “It’s something that’s going to be heightened exposure for her, and she’s kind of already suffered a little bit of backlash … The level of racism that’s out there, that she has witnessed on some of these websites [that covered her case], it’s been very upsetting to her. But she still carries on and is still proud to be a trailblazer for a just cause.”
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In December, the Arab-American Civil Rights League filed a different lawsuit against the city on behalf of a family who allege the police department discriminated against them, making anti-Arab remarks and retaliating when they complained.
In nearby cities and around the country, other Muslim women have faced circumstances similar to Kazan’s, being forced to remove headscarves worn for religious reasons while detained. Safety appears to be the primary reason cited for those rules, but, in recent years some departments — including Washington, D.C. police — have changed policies to allow women to keep their headscarves on in custody.
Another agency that now allows headscarves is the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in California. In 2007, Anaheim resident Souhair Khatib sued after officers at a courthouse holding cell compelled her to remove her hijab for security reasons. The civil rights lawsuit was settled in 2013, and the OCSD changed their policy to allow religious headscarves, conducting trainings about the change.
