AP Report: Ga. judge jails Muslim woman over head scarf
ATLANTA – A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated. A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.
Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after they arrested her Tuesday.
Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn’t permit or prohibit head scarfs.
“It’s at the discretion of the judge and the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision,” she said.
Valentine, who recently moved to Georgia from New Haven, Conn., said the incident reminded her of stories she’d heard of the civil rights-era South.
“I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” she said Wednesday from her home. She said she was unexpectedly released after the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.
The group cited a report that the same judge removed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter from the courtroom last week because they were wearing Muslim head scarves.
Jail officials declined to say why she was freed and municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that “it would not be appropriate” for him to comment on the case.
Last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her head scarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit in February 2007 after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.
Valentine’s husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.
Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive (like any religious Muslim woman would do!), Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.
(source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_re_us/muslim_headscarf_arrest)
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I support Judge Rollins and all the brave judges who dare stand against the howling Muslims who try to impose their ways and values on everyone else. I applaud their courage and bravery. I applaud their firmness in not giving in to these Muslims like the other Dhimmis do. We need more people like them!
What are civil rights? In the name of “civil rights”, can you cover yourself up in a black curtain and go to court without revealing who you are? In the name of “civil rights”, can you demand that you can build a minaret and howl your prayers 5 times a day without others protesting it? In the name of “civil rights”, should we allow you to marry 4 wives or young pre-pubescent children? In the name of “civil rights”, can you silence those who criticize jihadis and suicide bombers? Where does it stop? Once we give an inch to these Muslim extremists, they will declare victory and demand more and more until one day, we will be strangers and “foreigners” in our land.
Why must we adapt to YOUR immigrant culture? You should adapt to OURS since you decided to immigrate here.
To paraphrase Australian ex-PM John Howard:
IMMIGRANTS, NOT AMERICANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture… This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.
Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.
This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great American freedom, ‘THE RIGHT TO LEAVE’
If you aren’t happy here then LEAVE. We didn’t force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country that accepted YOU.
~MAVERIQUE~ 