Motar's attorney said her goal is to prevent a similar incident from happening to another student.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, February 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A Muslim student filed a law suit against a suburban New Orleans school system and a former high school teacher there, accusing them of failing to adequately resolve her claims that the teacher used religious slurs against her and yanked off her hijab.

Maryam Motar, who filed the suit Friday, January 28, in state district court, is seeking unspecified damages from Wes Mix and the Jefferson Parish School Board, The Associated Press (AP) reported Wednesday, February 2.

“She complains about the handling of a November hearing to resolve her complaints.”

The incident itself occurred last February. Motar then accused Mix of pulling off her head scarf, or hijab, during a world history class at West Jefferson High School and saying, “I hope God punishes you. No, I'm sorry. I hope Allah punishes you.”

The high school removed the social studies teacher, with Superintendent Diane Roussel recommending Mix’s termination in July.

The decision was then applauded by the prominent national and Islamic civil rights group, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), calling it “swift and decisive”.

The school board, however, overruled that decision after a closed-door hearing,  opting to suspend Mix without pay for several weeks and to require him to attend sensitivity training before returning to another school in the fall. He was also required to apologize to Motar, according to the AP.

“Mix’s attorney Larry Samuel said Mix apologized to Motar in a letter sent out last year. But Motar's attorney, Henry Kinney, said she has not received any letter.”

The suit accused the board of failing to take the matter seriously, with only five of nine members attending. Two members were joking or talking on a cellular telephone during Motar's testimony, the suit claimed, AP reported.

Samuel, however, described the hearing as “professional”.

“It was a very serious hearing,” he said. “This is a gentleman's livelihood at stake, and the board recognized that.”

School board attorney Michael Fanning said that he was not surprised by the lawsuit.

‘Preventing Similar Incident’

School board members defended their behavior during the hearing and Samuel, of the Jefferson Federation of Teachers, blasted the lawsuit as “financially motivated”.

“It's just what we thought,” Samuel said. “This has been about money all along.”

However, Kinney said Motar's goal is to prevent a similar incident from happening to another student, according to AP.

Students’ hostility grew so intense toward her after the incident that Motar had to withdraw from the school district in the fall, Kinney said. She is working toward her GED and plans to attend college later this year, he was quoted as saying by the AP.

A simple battery charge against Mix was dropped after Motar twice failed to show up in court to testify. Kinney attributed the absences to “personal reasons.”

Similar incidence did take place in other US schools.

On Wednesday, May 20, the Muskogee Public School District in Oklahoma said it changed its dress code to allow a 12-year-old Muslim girl to wear Hijab after a settlement announced by the Justice Department.

“This settlement reaffirms the principle that public schools cannot require students to check their faith at the schoolhouse door,” Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, was then quoted as saying by the CNN.

The government had filed a court complaint in March on behalf of Nashala Hearn, a sixth-grade student in Muskogee 's Benjamin Franklin Science Academy.

The girl was suspended twice by the Muskogee Public School District for wearing Hijab last year.

The girl and her family said she wore the Hijab as part of her observance of Islam.

On Saturday, February 28, a US professor who ordered a student to take off her religiously-mandated hijab resigned following harsh criticism from his college.

Robert Daniel, an instructor at Antelope Valley College, resigned Friday, February 27, in writing, heading off questioning and diatribe by the college’s board of trustees, Los Angeles Times reported

The ninth annual Muslim civil rights report “Unpatriotic Acts,” issued on May 2004 by CAIR, showed an unprecedented increase of 70 percent of anti-Muslim violence over the previous year.

The controversy over the issue of Hijab wearing has not been restricted to the United States, as the issue has recently taken a central stage in several European countries.

France triggered a controversy by adopting a bill banning hijab and religious insignia in public schools, a decision dismissed by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) as "discriminatory".

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations – unlike the symbolic Christian crucifixes or Jewish Kappas.