Muslim JROTC Student Denied Ability to Wear Head Cover
In the Muslim religion it is no secret that women in many cases will wear special head coverings. It is also no secret that the U.S. Army has very strict dress protocols. These two ideas mixed together with the idea of freedom as an American could lead to a very controversial situation. This situation arose last month to 14 year old Muslim girl in Tennessee.
Demin Zawity was introduced to the idea of JROTC and was intrigues by the idea and ended up joining. All was well for a while with her in the program and day by day she continued to wear her head covering, but then came a school spirit week parade. During the parade the JROTC would march, and in doing so would be wearing their uniforms. With the parade approaching shortly the head officer notified Zawity that she would not be able to march with her head covering. Zawity countered this by saying it was required to be worn by her religion. The head officer then looked out to others to figure out a way to figure the situation out.
The school district and local lawyers came to the conclusion that the only way they would be allowed to continue the program was if they followed the program regulations exactly, so no exceptions could be made. Zawity after hearing this then ended up quitting the program and her parents became outraged. They argued the decision for a few different reasons. One reason was that Jewish students were allowed to wear their yarmulke under their hat, while it may not be exposed they still see this as unfair. They also argued that there have been many rules and laws in the past that have been made but later were found to needing exceptions, and they think those is one of those situations exactly. The Department of Defense is now looking at the situations and evaluating current protocol.
With all of this being said there then is the questions of what should be done? Were her parents right? Should this situation have already come up before it did? In my opinion right off the bat whether or not the rule is good or bad doesnÂ’t matter, the fact that it is a part of the protocol at the moment means that it should be enforced well and the idea relayed to the students well also.
The officers saw Zawity wearing the head covering daily and knew that the situation was going to occur sooner or later that he was going to need to be asked to take it off. With how surprised and distraught she was when she was told she could not wear it shows that the officers did less than an adequate job of letting her know about this rule. The situation could have been dealt with before and it most likely would have been a lot less heated.
There then is the is the though of whether or not she should be allowed to wear her head covering while in uniform. I think that she and others should be able to do so.
I understand that the Army wants their to be a strict dress protocol to show being part of a team, but at the same time letting people also wear things like this can show how the Army has the ability to have people from very different backgrounds and religions coming together to work as one. I also agree with the parents that it is discriminatory to let Jews wear their head items but not allow Muslims to do so, at the least they should allow nobody at all to do this if even one group is excluded.
