Lawsuit: NYPD Grabbed Women's Hijabs During Protest

Two Muslim women are suing the NYPD, alleging that officers grabbed their hijabs during a protest against the Israeli attacks on Gaza last summer. Zarmeen Azam, 20, says Assistant Chief Ruel Stephenson grabbed her throat, "strangling her with the fabric of her hijab," and "dragged her along the ground for several long minutes," the New York Daily News reports. Shajnin Howlader, 19, says that after Stephenson pushed her Sgt. Joseph Spalding "yanked on" her hijab and "it tangled and caught around her throat, cutting off her ability to breathe or speak." A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the two women and the Council on American-Islamic Relations New York.

"Being forced to remove a hijab—a headscarf that covers one's hair, ears, neck, and parts of one's chest—in public, particularly in the presence of men who are not immediate family, is a profound violation of the wearer's sincerely held religious beliefs and practices," CAIR-NY said in a news release. The group said the incidents "appear to be part of a growing police practice of forcibly and publicly removing women's hijabs at protests as a form of brutal crowd control."

CAIR-NY said the lawsuit is seeking damages for the two women as well as " policy change, asking the court to declare that the NYPD is never permitted to forcibly and publicly remove women's hijabs." According to the lawsuit, the women were among protesters "kettled" and pepper-sprayed by police outside a Manhattan restaurant where Kamala Harris supporters had gathered after an event to celebrate the launch of her presidential campaign in August. Police sources tell the Daily News that officers were trying to "protect the patrons and disperse the aggressive crowd" after protesters stormed the restaurant. (Last year, the city agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from women who said they were forced to remove their hijabs for mug shots.)