Conservative Blogger Tells Retailers to Avoid Hiring Muslim Women

In a blog post Monday, conservative blogger Jim Hoft told his readers that the lesson of a potential discrimination lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch ANF is...for more retailers to discriminate? I guess the extreme right wing is going all-in on the racist card ahead of the 2012 elections. So why is Hoft (jokingly or not) advising corporate America to avoid Muslim women? Because one woman has the nerve to stand up for her rights. Hani Khan, a former stockroom worker for Abercrombie & Fitch, is suing the retailer after she was illegally fired after refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf while on the job. Khan said a manager at the company's Hollister Co. store at the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo hired her while she was wearing her hijab. The manager allegedly told Khan it was OK to wear the headscarf as long as it was in company colors. Four months later, the 20-year-old says a two senior managers (a district manager and a human resources manager) asked if she could remove the hijab while working. When Khan protested, she was suspended and then fired for refusing to remove it. "Growing up in this country where the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of religion, I felt let down," said Khan at a news conference. "This case is about principles, the right to be able to express your religion freely and be able to work in this country." Abercrombie defended its record by lamely saying diversity in its stores “far exceeds the diversity in the population of the United States." That would be great, if that were the point. The point is whether or not this particular woman was discriminated against after she was hired. The presence of other Muslims or other minority groups doesn't mean much if they're forced into the same small, cultural window that white Christian America lives in. Abercrombie's statement is a bit like a slave-owner bragging that his cotton fields "far exceed the diversity in the population of the United States." Khan's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, comes after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that Khan was fired illegally. The EEOC is also filing suit against Abercrombie. It's not the first time the government has gone after Abercrombie for discrimination against Muslims. In 2008 and 2009, the EEOC defended two additional women who claimed they were fired or denied work at the retailer for wearing a hijab.