WASHINGTON, January 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Muslim women in Alabama asked state driver's license officials to reconsider a decision requiring them to remove hijab if they want to get a license, media reports said.

"I wear this for religious reasons. I'm not taking it off," La Tonya Floyd of Mobile city was quoted as saying by Chicago Tribune Friday, January 16.

Floyd said she left a driver's license office in Mobile on December 19 after being told that state rules require hair to be visible in her license photograph, the paper added.

She appealed to the state Department of Public Safety (DPS) in Montgomery for an exemption for religious reasons, but was turned down, according to the American paper.

Floyd maintains that a photo in a hijab would be better because it would represent the way she should would look if stopped by a law enforcement officer or going through a security checkpoint.

Floyd, who moved to Mobile from Dallas last year, said she had no problem getting a license in Texas while wearing a hijab.

Boyd Campbell, a Montgomery attorney who specializes in immigration law, said banning hijab makes no sense when Alabama allows men to wear hair pieces and women to wear wigs in their driver's license photos.

"What's the difference?" Campbell asked.

The press also reacted with surprise to the state officials' demand, saying it is needless and ridiculous to ask Muslim women to remove their hijab for having a photo taken.

"What about the thousands of Alabama women who routinely wear wigs or men who wear hairpieces? Are DPS employees or county employees who take pictures routinely inquiring if anyone is wearing a hairpiece and asking for them to be removed? We doubt it," said Montgomery Advertiser.

"If the policy is not uniform applied, then the DPS does have a legal problem -- a serious one," it added.

"Does DPS really want to turn those people assigned to take driver's license photos into the hairpiece police?" the paper asked.

Floyd is one of more than 10 Muslim women from Mobile and Birmingham who complained to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) about the issue.

In a press release, CAIR said it has received reports from a number of Muslim women in that state who were prevented from obtaining or renewing licenses because they refused to take off their hijab, an obligatory dress code for Muslim women.

The Washington-based group wrote a letter to Alabama Public Safety Director Mike Coppage, requesting an investigation of the women's complaints and a review of the policy.

The letter noted that CAIR helped resolve similar complaints against the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The new BCIS guidelines say that religious coverings will be allowed "provided the subject of the photograph otherwise remains clearly identifiable".

Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman, said most states - including Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee - have policies that allow people to wear hijab for religious as well as medical reasons, such as cancer patients who have lost their hair.

The rules provide that the coverings can't obscure the person's face, he was quoted by Chicago Tribune as saying.

A recent survey by CAIR's Civil Rights Department indicated that most other states allow a religious exemption to prohibitions against head coverings in driver's license photographs.

"Alabama's existing policy actually hinders proper identification by law enforcement authorities in the field because the Muslim women drivers would appear one way in the license photograph and look quite different in person," said CAIR Civil Rights Coordinator Rizwan Qureshi.

"Islamic headscarves are not equivalent to baseball caps or head bands that will not necessarily be worn when a driver is stopped by police," he said.

Qureshi noted that the Bush administration recently criticized France for proposing a law that would prohibit Muslim girls from wearing hijab in public schools.

He recalled that an administration official said wearing religious attire is "a basic right that should be protected".