Isn't that the exact logic liberals decry when conservatives use it re: criminalizing guns? Why ban them, as criminals are clearly willing to break laws anyway?

Maybe banning headgear of a concealing nature does in fact mitigate crime. What then?

(I admit I haven't noticed tcf opining on that specific subject but I thought it's worth mentioning.)

It's my freedom of religion that's at stake and anything else is evil bigotry.

Basically this is one dumb bunch of bank officials making a mistake. I guess we should waterboard them until they appreciate the Religion of Peace.

This is a difficult issue. We're dealing with a proposed law in Minnesota that would make it illegal to wear anything covering your face or hair in a driver's license photo.

Weighing public safety against religious practices...no one seems to come out happy. But it sounds like the bank made a fair compromise.

Perhaps a better one is to issue certain customers a special ID card...or use a thumbprint scanner...or some sort of identification system that allows Muslim women (or anyone with a reason for covering their face, health or religious or otherwise).

At the end of the day, what this bank did was in the right ballpark of being in everyone's interest, including this woman's. Someone could steal her identity just as easily, or more easily, as anyone else's.

I remember back when my mom was going through chemo, and she had lost most of her hair (and what was left didn't look that good). She decided to forego the wig solution and she usually went out to do her errands in a scarf covering everything but her face. Would this bank have treated her the same way as the woman in the hijab?

And if she did decide to wear a wig, isn't that purposefully trying to change your appearance? Under this bank's logic, she'd be a security risk, right?

In the case of not wearing any headgear for ID photos -- if a muslim woman will be out mostly wearing her headgear anyway, isn't it the case that not wearing them on the photo will make recognition a little more difficult anyway?

I don't think covering one's hair with a hijab should interfere with the security procedures--it doesn't prevent her face from being registered by security cameras. No--in the end, the bank will just have to apologize.

...until you take about thirty seconds to think about them.

Unless all customers are required to remove all identity-obscuring accessories before entering the bank -- which they aren't at the bank in question -- how would the policy stop a robber, who is already forcefully breaking the rules, from doing it regardless?

Well, yes, Tracy, by the time the robber gets to forcefully breaking the rules, it's a little too late to bring up the one about the headgear. So the bank enforces the rule on sight, while the weapons are concealed rather than waiting for the robber to get to the point of opportunity with her features obscured. See, they're actually clever enough to use the would-be robber's efforts at concealment as an advance indicator that something may be amiss. And they've even learned to apply their concealment rules fairly broadly as a precaution. Who'da thunk, right?

This is another example of Tracy Clark-Flory's troubling moral relativism and negotiable feminism when it comes to Islam. For some reason Islamic tradition and superstition are sufficient arguments for many avowed liberals to turn of all concerns about gender equality and a secular government.

1. "Apparently, it isn't that I'm just missing the criminal potential of the head scarf."

Well, Tracy, a little Googling would address your ignorance, revealing that criminals have in fact used Islamic women's garbs to commit crimes and escape the police in Europe and other places.

2. "But does covering someone's hair really make them unrecognizable?"

Actually, yes it does reduce a key identifiable feature (hence starlets in the cliché headscarf and sunglasses) and has an effect similar to shaving one's head.

Once again Tracy for all of your posturing on this issue, you fail time and again to explain why a blatantly sexist and inegalitarian symbol mandated by nothing but arbitrary religious doctrine is a concern for feminists, liberals and progressives.

You also ignore the fact that the woman was served by the bank. If she wants to be treated like a regular, non-fundmentalist client, then she can remove her headscarf. I do not want a Federal facility like this bank in any way condoning or accommodating the use of the Hijab. The same would go for a Sikh carrying a dagger or any other believer who thinks they ought to able to break the rules which apply to everyone else.

Of course a ban on identity concealing clothes is not going to stop the kind robber who barges into the bank lobby, shoots a burst from a Tommy gun into the air, shouts "everyone on the floor!" in a 1930's Chicago gangster accent, and orders the trembling manager at gunpoint to open the safe.

It does, however, provide some security against the more common kind of bank robbery where someone calmly gets in line, walks up to a teller, and passes a threatening note demanding money. The tellers are usually instructed to comply rather than risk lives, and the robber runs out of the bank with the cash. In that case having some good quality security camera footage of the robber while he or she's in the lobby is really quite valuable for identification later.

Both CAIR and the bank seem to be handling this sensibly. CAIR recognizes the security issue, and the bank recognizes that it went overboard.

At her request

Depending on her mood..

This Muslimah could also have had a word with the bank manager and withdrawn her whole account for the hassle.

I say it's up to the sister's discretion.

Having worked for a national bank and had one of our branch managers killed during a robery I wanted to chime in on this. Before committing the actual robbery two of the gang went into the branch wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and a head scarf and sunglasses respectively. They did this in order to scope out the place. If we had called them on it when they first came in I suspect they would not have come back the next morning and shot three people.