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French Hijab Hostility Reaches Illinois!
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline) – The French Consulate in Chicago, IL, has denied a Muslim woman the renewal of her French passport because she refuses to take off her headscarf for the passport photo.
A French consular official demanded that the woman, who was not identified, remove or alter her scarf, but she refused. The United States allows non-citizens who wish to apply for an American visa to wear Islamic dress. Citizens are another issue, but this did not stop Islamic organizations in the United States from demanding that the woman, a French citizen who now resides in Illinois, be given an exemption in the name of religious freedom.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said on April 5 that it had sent a letter to French Consul General Jean-Rene Gehan to press the issue.
Nihad Awad, director of CAIR, issued a dramatic statement in a press release: “The right to religious freedom should not end at the door of the French consulate.”
The Islamic headscarf is a sensitive issue in France, where Islam is the second largest faith after Catholicism. Muslim students are often expelled from French schools for wearing Islamic attire.
Late last year, France’s highest administrative court reaffirmed a ban on scarf-wearing in public schools.
French Muslims, most of whom are immigrants from former French colonies in North Africa, are the targets of racial and religious discrimination in that country as well.
CAIR asked that Muslims across the United States contact the French Consulate in Chicago “to request that they grant the woman a religious exemption for her passport photo.”
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