Thread: Take your veil off in court

May 13, 2008, 12:09PM
Judge dismisses case of woman who says veil cost her claim


© 2008 The Associated Press

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DETROIT — A federal judge in Detroit has dismissed the case of a Muslim woman who sued a judge for demanding she remove her veil in court.

The judge ruled Monday against Ginnnah (ZHIN'-nuh) Muhammad's claims that her rights to freedom of religion and court access were violated.

Judge Paul Paruk (per-ROOK) requested she remove her veil during a 2006 hearing in the town of Hamtramck (ham-TRA'-mick). She was contesting a $3,000 charge from a rental-car company to repair a vehicle she said thieves had broken into.

Paruk told her he needed to see her face to judge her truthfulness and gave her a choice: Take off the veil or have the case dismissed. She kept it on and sued the judge last year alleging he violated her religious and civil rights.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 75813.html

Welcome to America!!!!

Originally Posted by FedUpinFarmersBranch

May 13, 2008, 12:09PM

The judge ruled Monday against Ginnnah (ZHIN'-nuh) Muhammad's claims that her rights to freedom of religion and court access were violated.

Sorry, Rule of law in america. if you dont like it, no one is making you stay.
go back to where you came from

Good story! I like the happy ending!

We need more judges like these!

"Legal Affairs

Lies as Plain as the Nose on Your Face?
by Dina Temple-Raston

This is the final report in a three-part series.

In This Series
Oct. 29, 2007

Foolproof Test for Catching Liars Still ElusiveOct. 30, 2007
Neuroscientist Uses Brain Scan to See Lies Form
Morning Edition, October 31, 2007 · Mark Frank got his start getting a read on people when he was a bouncer at a bar.

Frank — who is now a University of Buffalo social psychologist — found himself naturally spotting behavior that was important to his work. He could tell when patrons were underage, or packing a gun, or spoiling for a fight.

He went on to codify what he had observed by studying hours of videotape of crooks and murderers. His research is now helping investigative bodies around the world — including the FBI — interpret criminal and terrorist emotion and motivation.

"We call them little or subtle or micro expressions, because they are very compressed in time and they are fragmentary," Frank says. "But they leak, even though the person is struggling to conceal them ... and we have data that we can actually train people to see these — to improve their abilities by as much as 50 percent in as little as 30 minutes."

Homing in on Hot Spots

Frank's work grew out of a long tradition of facial expression study. The guru of this research is San Francisco psychologist Paul Ekman. After decades of watching faces, Ekman identified and catalogued thousands of combinations of emotions and expressions. He determined that about 3,000 of them actually revealed a specific emotion. He catalogued those tics, twitches and frowns, which became the Facial Action Coding System, or FACS.

Ekman mentored Frank, who has gone on to build off Ekman's early research. Frank's focus has been to develop a system that uses those facial emotional cues to home in on lies. He zeroes in on tics, furrows, smirks, frowns and displacement actions.

Frank teaches judges, FBI agents and interrogators, among others, to recognize and accurately read the tiny cues from facial muscles that can happen in the blink of an eye. Frank calls them "hot spots" — emotional cues that might be linked to deceit, or might be clues for further interrogation.
Frank is good at seeing those cues normal people might miss. Eyebrow movement, for example, can be a dead giveaway. Frank says his research has shown that when eyebrows are pulled up and together, they express fear. A muscle in the lower part of the face — something you feel when you stretch your mouth back — is also a hot spot.

"You see that in photos, like when a pickup truck is starting to overturn," Frank said. "You see fear expression in the driver's face."

Paul Moskal, a supervisory special agent with the FBI's office in Buffalo, went through Frank's microexpression training. He said it has made him a better investigator and a better listener.

"We all have a gut feeling that we know when people are lying, but it is very hard for us to articulate why," Moskal said. "I think it is putting science to what we think is intuitive, and for me the interest is where they cross. It makes you aware of things you weren't aware of before. "

A Law Enforcement Tool

To a certain extent, Frank is codifying human intuition while he's also debunking myths about how to read people.

"The literature shows that liars don't make less eye contact than truth tellers. But you ask anyone on the planet what liars do, the first thing they agree on is liars don't look you in the eye," Frank said. "Even just getting over that mythology is a step in the right direction."

Of course, there is a huge danger in parsing complex distinctions and emotions into simple facial expressions. Eyebrows might rise and knit together when a subject talks about a particular convenience store, for example, but it may not be because the subject robbed the store. Perhaps the store was the site of another event — a first kiss, or a fight, for example — that triggered an emotional reaction. And that reaction — not lying — could light up a hot spot.

John Yarbrough is a former member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He has worked with Frank and Ekman to provide real-world applications for their microexpression research. He also teaches the techniques. Yarbrough says Frank and Ekman's low-tech approach to reading people is one of the most valuable tools available in law enforcement today. It's a tool officers can carry with them during encounters, whether it's a formal interrogation or face-to-face contact on the street, Yarbrough says.

Researchers are now looking at whether computers can do the emotional interpreting that humans do. The Department of Homeland Security gave Rutgers University $3.5 million to develop a computer-based facial reader. Ideally, the computer would be able to analyze nonverbal cues on video and make a judgment about a subject's truthfulness. Researchers say one of the challenges that remains is accurately correlating facial expressions to deception — the same problem Frank grapples with using his low-tech system.

Reading Terrorists

While Frank's system is still unproven at detecting deception, law enforcement could use hot spots in an effort to uncover a suspect's motivation — particularly when it comes to terrorism. That's because microexpressions are cross-cultural, Frank and Ekman say.

"The actual mechanics of the emotion, the wiring in the body, the signal in the face, is the same for every culture," Frank said. "What that means is that it doesn't matter what culture you are from — anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happy, sad and surprise are shown by all people in every culture on the planet, and they show them the same way."

Consider Osama bin Laden. Frank has analyzed videos released by bin Laden since the late '80s; he says bin Laden's facial expressions show increasing disgust toward America.

"Disgust is actually the precursor emotion to genocide," he said. "Anger isn't. Anger is about what you did; disgust is about who you are. When you see that with people like bin Laden … you start to understand how people can do those things."

For now, a window on emotions and an understanding of motivations may have to suffice while scientists and law enforcement continue their search for the perfect lie detector."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15791790

Here is another article on this issue.

Pay close attention to the very interesting first comment posted by a reader who did some research



Judge in veil case to issue written ruling
Woman takes case to federal court; lawyer says rights violated


BY DAVID ASHENFELTER • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • April 29, 2008


A Muslim woman who lost a small-claims suit in Hamtramck district court in 2006 after she refused to remove her religious veil during testimony took her case before a federal judge today, hoping to overturn the district judge's decision and establish precedent in eastern Michigan courtrooms.


But after 30 minutes of legal arguments, U.S. District Judge John Feikens said that he would issue a written decision in the case. He gave no indication of when he might rule, but hinted through questions to lawyers that he may take no action at all, which lawyers conceded he could do under Supreme Court decisions

To get into the courthouse today, Ginnah Muhammad had to remove her veil and show a photo ID. She had to remove her veil in a private area in the presence of a female court security officer and show her Michigan license, which contains her photo. After court, Muhammad and her attorney, Nahib Ayad, said she routinely is required to remove her veil in the presence of female security officers when she goes to airports, and is accommodated by female officers.

"If the judge rules in our favor, it would preclude other judges from doing the same thing to others," Ayad, of Plymouth, said Monday. "It is one of those cases that probably will go to the U.S. Supreme Court." Ayad said he would appeal if the decision goes against his client.

The Michigan Attorney General's Office filed a motion asking Feikens to dismiss Ginnah Muhammad's suit against 31st District Judge Paul Paruk on the grounds that federal judges have no authority to review the validity of state court judgments and that judges have immunity for their decisions.

The Attorney General's Office declined to comment directly on the case.

Muhammad lost her small-claims case because she refused an order by Paruk to remove her veil to testify.

Muhammad, who had sued a car rental company after it tried to charge her $2,083 for repairing a rental car that thieves had broken into, is a devout Muslim who wears a full hijab as well as a niqab, a veil that covers all but a 2-inch swath of her eyes.

Paruk, who wanted to see her face during testimony so he could assess her credibility, gave her a choice: remove the veil and testify or the case would be dismissed.

Muhammad offered to testify before a female judge, but Paruk is the only district judge in Hamtramck.

In the end, Paruk dismissed her case. The car rental company countersued her and won a $2,083 judgment.

Ayad took the case to federal court before the rental company could collect. Ayad says Paruk violated her constitutional right to practice her religion and denied her access to the court system.

Assistant Attorney General Margaret Nelson asked Feikens to dismiss the case on the grounds that Paruk's order did not interfere with Muhammad's ability to practice her religious beliefs.

That’s why, Ayad said, she was willing to testify in her small-claims case without the veil in the presence of a female judge.

In your voice
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nygizak wrote:

I am a resident of Hamtramck, MI. I think you might find it interesting to know that Islamic scholars agree that women should remove their veils in court. I have taken the following quotes from:
http://www.niqabiparalegal.com/archives ... s_in_c.php

Al-Dasooqi said: "When testimony is given concerning a woman who wears niqaab (face-veil), she has to remove her niqaab. This applies in the case of marriage and other matters, such as selling, giving gifts, debts, power of attorney, and so on. This is the opinion favoured by our shaykh." (Haashiyat al-Dasooqi 'ala'l-Sharh al-Kabeer, 4/194).

Shaykh al-Dardeer said: "It is not permitted to give testimony against a woman in niqaab until she uncovers her face so that it may be known who she is and what she looks like." (Al-Sharh al-Kabeer li'l- Shaykh al-Dardeer, 4/194)

I think it is very unfortunate that many people have interpreted Judge Paruk's actions as descriminatory. Clearly, Islam is in agreement with him.
5/10/2008 8:38:35 AM


www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID ... 008/NEWS06 - 58k -




Both of these judges need to be congratulated for their refusal to cave in to demands for special treatment as well as their courage in doing what is right. We need many more like them and for the ones who are like them but still afraid to show it, to do so.

With every story like this comes proof that all is NOT lost.