Head for cover

Sometimes the IU campus resembles an Abercrombie and Fitch store — a lot of attractive, mostly white, wholesome-looking kids milling about trying to be hip — but hopefully the similarities end there.

The struggling teen clothing store was forced to change its controversial “Look Policy” yet again this past month when a California judge ruled that firing an employee for wearing a Muslim headscarf was illegal.

Umme-Hani Khan wore hijab for the first four months she worked for A&F until it was declared a violation of the Look Policy. When she refused to remove her head covering, you know, because the demand compromised her religious expression, she was fired.

Although we hope everyone in the Bloomington community can agree A&F was clearly in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which disallows religious discrimination in hiring and firing decisions, we’re afraid some residents are still struggling to tame their own Islamophobic tendencies.

Surprisingly to some, most Muslims are not Arab. The country with the highest Muslim population is actually Indonesia, a good reminder that Islam is a faith, not a race.

Many targets of anti-Muslim hate aren’t even Muslim, revealing Islamophobia to be a stew of racial and religious intolerance.

The California judge’s decision came down around the same time that an Indian-American woman was crowned Miss America and subsequently harangued as an al-Qaeda operative who hates America.

That totally explains why she competed to be Miss America.

A picture has been floating around Facebook of a woman wearing an American flag-patterned hijab with the caption, “What would you do if you saw this?”

Comments vary, but most respondents agree that assaulting the woman is their patriotic duty.

For some reason American flag bikinis don’t draw similar ire.

And in the heartland, we’re not doing much better.

Members of the Editorial Board have witnessed IU students accost their Muslim peers for wearing hijab.

Other expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment are more subtle, but we know it’s here.

As IU Gradlife blogger Ahmed put it in his entry about being Muslim in Bloomington, “Muslims in Bloomington are certainly exposed to various modes of prejudice that mobilize Islamophobic tropes …”

It’s a shame Muslim students need to be prepped for our intolerance, especially considering that the IU community is one teeming with resources to combat Islamophobia.

Just a block away from the southeast side of campus is the Islamic Center of Bloomington, which has served Bloomington’s Muslims for the past 20 years.

We have it on good authority that the center is welcoming to those looking to learn more about the faith.

For students, IU offers classes in religious studies, Arabic and the Muslim
diaspora.

Some of these classes will even fulfill the diversity in the United States requirement for the College of Arts and Sciences.

But these resources only work if we use them.

It takes effort to train ourselves not to give into base assumptions and
stereotypes.

Prejudice is usually accidental — societal and personal influences often allow ignorance to become the norm, which is why it’s important to point out problematic thoughts and behaviors.

And putting only some of the most recent examples down on paper, it’s clear that we have a problem with intolerance.

We need to stop patting ourselves on the back about how progressive we think we are and actually progress.

­— opinion@idsnews.com
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