Protest over Islamic veil draws in the Ku Klux Klan

2/8/2005 10:00:00 AM GMT

Source: courier-journal.com

A mother in the American town of Shepherdsville has pulled her son out of the local high school in protest of what she says is an unfair application of the school's dress code.

Lisa Whiteside is protesting against the Bullitt Central high-school after she learned that two Muslim students, who'd enrolled in the school after the winter break, had been allowed to wear the hijab.

According to Whiteside, her son was given in-school suspension for wearing a white button-down shirt.

However, the school board attorney Eric Farris said that school records indicated that the student wasn't disciplined but received a warning on September 1st as his shirt was a violation of the school's dress code, which requires students to wear polo-style shirts.

The dress code also prohibits "headwear," including hats, visors, bandannas and sunglasses. But Farris said federal protections of such religious garments as the hijab override the dress code.

Whiteside says her son was turned away from the school last week when he turned up wearing a t-shirt with the words 'FBI' and 'Firm Believer in Christ' on it.

Farris says Whiteside accompanied her son into the school office and asked administrators, "Well, can he wear this?"

When they replied no, she told them she would remove him from the school, he said.

Bullitt Central's dress code prohibits T-shirts of any kind, unless they feature the school's logo. It also requires students to wear khaki, black or navy pants, skirts or walking shorts. While jeans can only be worn by students on special days scheduled by administrators.

School officials and students said Whiteside's protests attracted the attention of the Ku Klux Klan. When protesting outside the school, she was joined by other men and women, some of whom were clad in white robes and carried Confederate flags and white-supremacist regalia.

Whiteside said she didn't organize any involvement with the KKK, adding that her concerns were being misconstrued by students and school officials as racially driven.

"That got out of hand," she said. "It wasn't a racial thing. It was about equal rights and fairness to all students."

But Farris said if anyone has made the issue a racial argument, it was Whiteside; a statement backed by other school pupils.

Bullitt Central students Charlie Johnson and Cayce Dever, both seniors and student government officers, agreed with Farris saying; "I feel they were using the dress code to hit on something broader, and that's hate," Charlie says.

Cayce said that when she participated in a counter-protest last week with other students, including Charlie, she spoke with protesters standing with Whiteside and told them that federal law protected the Muslim students' cultural dress.

According to Cayce they said, "I didn't understand because I didn't have white pride. I said, 'I have American pride.' "

Charlie said that even though some students disagree with the school's dress code, the student body seemed to be united in support of the Muslim girls. "The whole dress code is about being modest -- not showing your body," he said. "The hijab is the same thing. I don't feel by them wearing it that they're tromping on anyone's right to wear jeans."

Students also posted messages on the double-sided marquee in front of the school. One side read, "Education breeds tolerance." The other read, "Lack of education breeds intolerance."