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Prit Shah
Ms. Thompson
AP Lang Block 2 Skinny A
May 18, 2015
Publish Ready
Restrictions on Islamic Religious Expression: Justified or Unwarranted
Muslims populate twenty one percent of the world, making Islam one of the largest and
most widely accepted religions in the world. As a part of contemporary culture, millions of
people freely express and practice their certain beliefs on whichever religion they believe
imbibes their identity, especially Islamic people. Because Islam incontrovertibly does not
negatively impact peoples lives, restrictions on Islamic religious expression are unwarranted and
people should have the freedom to express their Islamic beliefs without these restrictions, which
can be substantiated by unreasonable repression of headscarves, other personal religious rights,
and religious expression within Islamic countries.
Being seemingly innocuous, headscarves have been unreasonably repressed. In reference
to the forbidding of headscarves in France, President Chirac of France stated, Secularism is one
of the great successes of the Republic we cannot let it weaken. The ban is mainly due to the
increase in number of Muslim women attending school while wearing the headscarf ("Chirac
Calls for Ban on Headscarves"). Muslims believe that the ban on headscarves violates the
Muslim school girls freedom of religious expression and they will be perceived as avoiding their
religion. The headscarf is believed to be a symbol of Islamic identity in which a simple piece of
clothing is worn to depict strength in the belief of Islam; therefore, they should be allowed to

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peacefully adorn the headscarf as a part of daily attire and should not be treated with disdain.
Another example of headscarf repression happened with a woman named Malak Kazan. Malak
Kazan, a Muslim woman, sued the Dearborn Height police and the city of Detroit for violating
her religious rights. She had been arrested for a traffic misdemeanor; however, the police
required her to remove her hijab (headscarf) in order for them to take the picture (Muslim
Woman Suing Michigan Police For Violating Her Religious Freedom). Because the hijab does
not conceal any part of her face, why the removal of it was such a great concern to the Dearborn
Height police department did not appear to be lucid. In addition, the view of the Dearborn Height
police that she needed to remove her hijab implicates to other Muslim people in the vicinity that
they possibly will have to remove their hijabs, whereas they should be allowed to wear them
without being asked to remove them in such a place of widespread democracy. In both cases, the
headscarves were plainly a principle part of daily attire that had not negatively impacted any
person to view them; thus, people should have the freedom to wear these hijabs without
restriction.
With that thought in mind, other personal religious rights of Muslim people are
unnecessarily being violated. NYPD officers infiltrated many Muslim New York institutions
consisting of innocent people practicing religion freely, without any warrant or basis, to monitor
these people (ACLU). These false accusations of innocent Muslim New Yorkers portray that
these Muslim people simply utilized the facilities to express religious freedom. Also, this
supports how Muslim people should have the freedom to express their beliefs, because they now
are unable to freely practice religion in the New York Muslim institutions without apprehension

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as a result of the NYPDs actions. A Muslim girl and boy both were deprived of their religious
freedoms by the girl not being allowed to be excused from swimming lessons due to a male
teacher, and by the boy being removed from school for refusing to shave his beard for religious
reasons (Islam and Life - Religious Freedom Trumped by School Integration). A boy shouldnt
be expelled from a school for the simple reason of not shaving his beardunless a school rule
was in place, which there was not; thus, this is the epitome of the boy not being able to express
his Islamic beliefs. In addition, if a girls family does not allow it, she shouldnt have to take
swimming lessons from a male, especially if it involves religion being a reason for her to not be
involved with the swimming lessons. Therefore, this supports how people should be allowed to
express their Islamic beliefs without any unnecessary restriction because this would allow a more
full integration of cultures in the school, and Muslim girls would not have to do anything they
would feel uncomfortable doing. The Muslim institutions, along with the school children,
humbly were practicing their religion without harming anyone in any way; therefore, they should
be allowed to practice their Islamic beliefs without any unnecessary violation of their rights.
Islamic people even become needlessly oppressed religiously within their own Islamic
countries. Those countries which call themselves Islamic, among them all Arab countries, are
hardly interested in these ideas. The search for truth, including scientific truth, is rarely a central
concern of leaders and the intellectual elite in these countries Spiritual achievements tend to
wither away in a regime where freedom is harshly repressed by dogmatic fanaticism (Gordon
63). Iran, one of the Arab countries, for example, is indirectly repressing its citizens desire to
expand their religious horizons due to the lack of separation between politics and religion. By

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creating a totalitarian regime in the name of God, Iran impinges the motivation for citizens to
respect and strive for spiritual and religious enhancement. Indirectly, the people of Iran are
ironically and unnecessarily repressed towards Islamic expression as the government utilizes
Islam towards repression of the people. Additionally, according to Eshkevari, If you hold only
Islam responsible in Iran, Islamic groups, Islamic individuals and religious dignitaries even at
the level of religious maraji who should be respected more than anybody else in the Islamic
Republic have been oppressed and abused more than any other group in the past twenty years
(153). Religious dignitaries, who promote religion and are of high stature and respectability,
have the ability to make religion more lucid to others. Furthermore, because Iran endorses an
authoritative regime through the name of God, these religious individuals should be venerated by
principles of Islam. Thus, religious figures are unreasonably being repressed even within the
Islamic country of Iran, which should be bolstering the religion. People and religious dignitaries
within Islamic countries purely wish to promote Islam without deleteriously impacting anyone;
hence, they should be permitted to support Islamic beliefs without the Islamic country itself
using Islam to repress the people within it.
In conclusion, despite Islam being a prodigiously accepted religion in the world that is
expressed by many, often unwarranted religious restrictions and repression are placed upon it.
Bans on headscarves, religious repression in Islamic countries, infiltrations from NYPD officers,
and the deprival of religious freedoms towards children, all substantiate how Islam is
unnecessarily repressed on matters that are rather simple and do not affect others in a detrimental
way. Through direct and indirect repression, Islam has been shaped to be the way it is today and

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without this unwarranted repression, it may have been able to proliferate even further with
people completely expressing their Islamic beliefs without restriction.