The real question is, Why would a Muslima want to work at Abercrombie & Fitch in the first place? Wouldn’t she find the clothing line, the advertising, and the whole atmosphere objectionable on moral grounds? Shouldn’t she prefer to shun such an environment rather than want to work there at all, especially if she is pious and observant enough to want to wear the hijab? Unless, of course, the real point of her getting hired in the first place was to compel an American business to change its practices in order to accommodate Islamic norms, and thereby to assert once again that Islam must dominate and not be dominated. Stealth Jihad Update from San Francisco: “Abercrombie & Fitch sued over hijab firing,” by Vivian Ho for the San Francisco Chronicle, June 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):
SAN MATEO — A Bay Area Muslim woman sued Abercrombie & Fitch on Monday, claiming that the clothing retailer fired her when she refused to remove her religious headscarf while working at a San Mateo store.
Hani Khan, 20, sued after the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that the chain had wrongfully fired her. Settlement talks failed to resolve the dispute.
Khan was fired in 2010 from Abercrombie’s Hollister Co. store in the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo for refusing to remove her hijab, or headscarf, according to the suit her attorneys filed in federal court in San Francisco.
Khan said that when she was hired in October 2009, store managers told her that her hijab would not be in conflict with Abercrombie’s “look policy,” as long as she wore it in company colors.
Abercrombie requires that employees dress in natural, “beachy” clothes such as jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt, Khan said.
Then in February 2010, a week after a district manager visited the store, a company official told Khan to stop wearing the hijab, her suit says. She refused and was suspended, and a week later was fired. […]
In a news conference Monday, Khan – wearing a bright purple hijab – said the experience with Abercrombie “shook my confidence. I didn’t have that problem before.”
Khan began wearing a hijab when she was in kindergarten and said she never had a problem while growing up in Foster City.
“After 9/11, all my neighbors, all my classmates, all my teachers – they supported me,” Khan said. “No one had an issue then. For there to be an issue now, it was just completely out of the ordinary.”
Khan’s suit seeks to force Abercrombie to change its dress code to loosen restrictions on religious clothing. She is not trying to get her job back but is seeking back wages and unspecified damages.
Khan’s lawsuit is not the first of its kind against the company. Two other former employees have filed suits, claiming that Abercrombie discriminated against them because of their hijabs.
“Abercrombie prides itself on requiring what it calls ‘a natural, classic American style,’ ” said Araceli Martinez-Olguin, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, which is representing Khan. “But there is nothing American about discriminating against someone because of their religion.”
Yes. It seems tolerant to force Abercrombie & Fitch to change its dress code. It seems open-minded. In fact, it is accommodating an ideology that is radically intolerant, and when in power has never granted similar accommodation to those outside it.