Caught in a Webb: Kimberlie, pictured here at a press conference with her lawyer, finds dissent among cops and Muslims. (photo by jamaal abdul-alim)

Head Games

Kimberlie Webb believes she can work as a police officer and observe her religion at the same time. Not everyone agrees.

by Jamaal Abdul-Alim

If you were to put an Islamic head-scarf like the one worn by Philadelphia police officer Kimberlie Webb on a scale, it would weigh a few ounces. But the weight it carries on the scales of justice in a case currently in federal court in Philadelphia is far greater.

Webb believes her headscarf, or khimar—the most distinctive, symbolic and controversial part of the Islamic dress code for women (known as hijab)—is too important to her beliefs to remove during her shifts as a patrol officer.

“I feel naked,” Webb says, referring to how she feels at work without her khimar, speaking outside the 19th-floor federal courtroom where her case is taking place before a three-member appellate judge panel. “I want to cover.”

But police brass feel that the headscarf undermines a department policy that bans religious insignia and symbols on uniforms. The state court has held that the policy—known as Directive No. 78—“reflects the fact that the police force is a para-military organization in which personal preferences must be subordinated to the overall policing mission … ”

The police department has said only that the wearing of an Islamic headscarf “could” cause problems in a diverse community such as Philadelphia.

Eleanor Ewing, an attorney for the city, says the police department doesn’t have to show how the head-scarf would cause problems.

“You don’t have to wait for some catastrophe,” Ewing said during oral arguments in the case this week.

She said police supervisors—not the courts—should be trusted to decide what poses an undue hardship on the department.

Webb’s attorney, Jeffrey Pollock, argues that the police need to demonstrate how Webb’s headscarf would pose an undue hardship to legally deny Webb’s wishes.

“We’re entitled to more than, ‘I think it’s a problem,’” Pollock says.

Pollock says other police departments, like those in Chicago and New York, allow female officers to wear Islamic headscarves. He characterizes the case as a “fundamental liberty right” but acknowledges Webb failed to properly raise the issue constitutionally at the state level.

Though the case is being fought on behalf of an individual, it’s part of a larger global conflict between secularism and religious freedom.

In France in 2004, for instance, Muslim schoolgirls were prohibited from wearing Islamic headscarves in schools. In Turkey earlier this year the nation’s high court overturned a move by the ruling party to lift a long-standing ban against headscarves at universities.

Perhaps the most notable difference in this case is that Webb is—as city attorney Ewing stated—an “armed agent” of the city.

The issue of hijab—and the degree to which it must be worn—is also a contentious one within Islamic circles. Opinions are as disparate as the ways in which Islamic women observe the hijab, some appearing in public only with large overgarments and veiled faces while others settle for simple headscarves and indistinct clothes.

Among Islam’s faithful there are also disparate opinions on whether Islamic women should even serve as police officers—a job that regularly places them alone in the company of men who aren’t relatives or husbands. The job also requires women to perform protective duties that Islam typically assigns to men.

Webb’s been reproached by Islamic believers, particularly women, for being a police officer. She says they become more sympathetic when she explains how she can be of help to women. She notes that female officers are needed to conduct body searches of female prisoners.

To bolster her decision to remain on the force, Webb speaks of female Muslim warriors who demonstrated their mettle on the battlefield during the days of old. Probed for her own war stories, Webb reluctantly speaks of an instance in 2001 when she shot and killed a man who was stabbing his wife.

“It was a clean shoot,” she says, adding that her only regret was the impact it may have had on the couple’s child.

Webb’s supporters say people should keep such emergency situations in mind when judging her fight to wear her headscarf on the job.

“I really don’t think that if you ever had a loved one in an emergency situation you would care what someone is wearing if they’re a public servant,” says Imam Shair Abdul-Mani, communications director for the American Muslim Law Enforcement Officers Association. All that matters, he says, is how the public servant responds.