Georgia Muslim student says school expelled her for wearing hijab

Linde McAvoy converted to Islam a few weeks after she enrolled in the Georgia Career Institute Conyers, US state of Georgia, for cosmetology last December — so she started wearing a hijab (headscarf) to her classes.

Linde McAvoy converted to Islam a few weeks after she enrolled in the Georgia Career Institute Conyers, US state of Georgia, for cosmetology last December — so she started wearing a hijab (headscarf) to her classes.
But according to complaint letter to GCI, McAvoy “almost immediately” began getting harassed by GCI administrators.
“For example, Joyce Meadows — GCI’s president and CEO, who is also the campus director for the Murfreesboro [Tennessee] campus — started insisting that Ms. McAvoy remove the hijab, citing the school’s dress code,” the letter from Muslim Advocates said. “Even after Ms. McAvoy explained that she wore her hijab out of religious obligation, Ms. Meadows insisted on its removal, despite the fact that the dress code does not prohibit religious head coverings. Ms. McAvoy was repeatedly ejected from her classes for wearing her hijab.”
Nimra Azmi, a staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, told the Huffington Post that it’s “incredibly important for Muslim women to wear the hijab and get educated. We don’t think those things are antithetical. We don’t think that wearing the hijab is inherently unprofessional.”
The complaint letter added that Meadows told McAvoy if she wanted to continue attending GCI she would have to remove her hijab while on campus or provide external confirmation that she wore the hijab for religious reasons — and McAvoy refused, saying the school cites no such requirement.