It seems to be an unwritten credo of members of protected classes throughout the U.S.: If you are not a victim of discrimination, say you are anyway. It helps promote your group’s claim of systematic abuse.
As so often happens, a woman in Dearborn, Mich., was exposed as a fraud and forced to drop her lawsuit against the Dearborn Police. The woman, Maha Aldhalimi, asserted in 2015 that officers required her to remove her Muslim headscarf, or hijab, for a booking photo.
Michigan Radio explained in June of that year, Aldhalimi had been arrested on a warrant stemming from an unpaid parking violation. According to a federal lawsuit she filed, she removed complied with the command that she shed the garment “reluctantly, involuntarily, and against her sincerely-held religious belief.”
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Fatina Abdrabboh, director of the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee, argued that the cops had violated Aldhalimi’s First Amendment rights, telling reporters, “She could have been fully identified with her headscarf. She presented no threat. This woman was arrested for a parking violation.”
The lawsuit, she maintained, was “about government respect of deeply held and undeniable religious freedom” and was a “last resort” after efforts to discuss an appropriate hijab policy with the city were rebuffed. “It’s unfortunate … Dearborn did not attempt to dialogue or meet us halfway,” she said.
Earlier this month, the police played their trump card in court. Via the Dearborn Patch:
The city of Dearborn, which was also named as a defendant, said in a statement Wednesday that video taken in the police department’s booking room during the arrest “revealed that her claims were false.”
[…]
When presented with the video evidence from the internal investigation, led by Police Captain Issa Shahin, Aldhalimi’s attorney withdrew the lawsuit on March 10, the city said.
The article goes on to quote city officials who said that the lawsuit “attracted a great deal of unfavorable media coverage to Dearborn and to the Dearborn Police Department that lasted for weeks.”
Sounds as though they have grounds for a lawsuit against Aldhalimi, who should be delighted if they sue. She will get her day in court yet.
