IU 'uncovered'

There's more to communicating than speaking and writing. Your gestures, your stance and your facial expressions speak eloquently even when you are silent.\nSometimes we can't control our nonverbal communication. Certain reflexes are involuntary. If you smile sincerely, the muscles around your eyes will contract. Try to fake a smile and those muscles stay still. \nOther types of nonverbal communication are purely voluntary. We choose our clothing, for example. Wearing a black shirt and priest's collar sends one sort of message. Wearing a little black dress sends another.\nSome people choose to demonstrate their faith through their clothing. Many Muslim women, for example, wear a hijab, or head scarf, to demonstrate their purity.\nBut when some female Muslim students recently tried to pose for their campus ID cards while wearing the hijab, they were told University policy required them to uncover their heads.\nTwo of these students refused. The hijab doesn't cover the face. The photo would still be useful as identification. But they were told to take their scarves off again.\nThe University has since allowed the women to take the photo with their hijab in place. \nThat means that IU's policies are now in line with those of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the State Department. Muslim women can have their photographs taken for drivers' licenses and passports with their hijab on as long as they sign a letter stating that they are doing so for religious purposes.\nIncidents like this happen all over the country.\n"I think it's the most common type of discrimination Muslim-American women deal with," Rabiah Ahmed, communications coordinator at the Council for American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., said.\nAhmed said that 16 percent of incidents of anti-Muslim harassment reported to CAIR involved women wearing the hijab. Countless others go unreported, she said.\nSome readers are probably wondering what the big deal is. It's just a scarf. They only had to take it off for one photo. Who cares?\nEveryone should. The stakes are too high.\nAs Nathan Ainslie, president of the Muslim Student Union, said, the women "would see [removing the hijab] as a fundamental compromise of their faith to the power of the state."\nOne of the women who was asked to remove her headscarf agreed.\n"The issue was not actually the literal fact that a piece of my hair was going to be seen in this picture," said Aisha, who asked to be identified only by her first name. It was more "the fact that I was not given a choice. It was not my decision to uncover. They told me that either I uncovered or there was no picture."\n"Hijab is a symbol of choice and personal convictions," she said. "When you are told that you cannot express this choice that you have chosen, then it makes your statement useless."\nThe incident united the Bloomington religious community, Ainslie said, because all faiths recognized the problem's importance. \nInterfaith solidarity is important, because what happens to one minority could happen to all. \n"If Jewish men can't wear the yarmulke, then I should be afraid for my rights, too," Ainslie added.\nIt's easy for most of us to forget about the rights of minorities. By definition, most of us are in the majority. Our rights are secure.\nBut the real test of our society's commitment to liberty is our protection of minorities' freedoms.\nFreedom needs limits on government power to survive. If the government can regulate peaceful expression of religious sentiments, then there are no limits to its authority.\nFreedom of speech isn't just freedom to talk.