Students against religious apparel ban

Today, the Muslim Student Association will meet with Oregon lawmakers in Salem to urge them to support a bill that would repeal an 87-year-old Oregon law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious garb at work.

“[On] Salem lobby day, we’ll visit Senators to ask their support in overturning Oregon teachers’ religious-garb ban,” said Erica Charves, president of the MSA and a senior in community development.

In Salem, members of the MSA and other students will meet with House Speaker Dave Hunt, with whom they worked to draft House Bill 3686.

In 1923, Speaker of the House and prominent Ku Klux Klan member Kaspar K. Kubli, helped pass a law that banned teachers from wearing religious garb, with the aim of keeping Catholic nuns, monks and priests out of public schools, according to an Oregonian article titled “Saying goodbye to an ugly lingering prejudice,” on Nov. 29, 2009.

According to the same article, “the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 786, the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which allows all workers—except teachers—to wear religious dress under most circumstances, and observe their holy days.”

The Sikh Coalition, another sponsor of the proposed repeal, said on its Web site (www.sikhcoalition.org) that Ajeet Singh, who “served as a history teacher for the neediest students at the toughest public schools in Brooklyn, N.Y.” and whose “students broke achievement records for the annual state examination,” could not teach in Oregon because he wears a turban, or dastaar.
Nevertheless, some object to a lift on the ban, fearing that teachers will proselytize to children or wear clothing with verbal religious messages.

For instance, the ACLU’s David Fidanque told The Oregonian that “All students and their families should feel welcome, and that’s as important, if not more important than teachers’ freedom of religious expression.”

In another Oregonian article (“Oregon teachers may get the OK to wear religious clothing in class,” Nov. 23, 2009), he said that “the ACLU fields many complaints that public schools and teachers do too much to promote Christianity, particularly in rural Oregon.”

“Lifting the ban on religious dress could lead some Christian teachers to wear Jesus T-shirts or take other steps to evangelize at school,” Fidqanque said.

Currently, the law banning teachers from wearing religious garb, OR 342.650, reads: “No teacher in any public school shall wear any religious dress while engaged in the performance of duties as a teacher.”

In addition to the law prohibiting teachers from wearing religious dress, a second law, OR 342.655, says that teachers who violate the ban on religious dress could lose their teaching licenses. Consequently, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jews in Oregon must choose between practicing their religion as they see fit and teaching.

Law 342.650 “represents constitutional exercise of legislature’s obligation to protect religious freedom of pupils,” according to the Web site www.oregonlaws.org.

“Freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion,” said President Barack Obama during a speech in Cairo. “That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S.

government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.”

The new law would allow public school teachers to wear hijabs, yarmulkes, turbans and crosses, but not T-shirts that say “Jesus Saves,” according to Charves.

“Current law prevents proselytizing to children and clothing with a religious message,” she said.

Charves and other proponents of the repeal maintain that religious garb, such as a hijab or yarmulke, are personal, not a form of proselytizing.