Unveiled in a new guise: Law vs. religion

How many times must we grapple with religion and its intrusion into the public’s business?

That could pass for a grouchy rhetorical question, but I’ll answer: an unlimited number of times, apparently.

Singing Christmas carols in public schools.

Nativity scenes on the courthouse lawn.

Requiring Muslim women who wear head-to-toe covering to reveal their entire faces when being photographed for a driver’s license.

I’m just getting warmed up.

Orange County jailers got caught up in the game last year when a 32-year-old Muslim woman from Anaheim refused to remove her scarf during an eight-hour jail lockup. The jailers insisted, citing the scarf as a potential strangulation weapon -- either by her or someone else -- and prevailed.

An unlikely scenario, but -- and I can’t believe I’m saying this -- if those are the rules, those are the rules.

Far-fetched, because the woman was jailed only for failing to complete a community service requirement following a welfare fraud conviction. In other words, they knew she wasn’t a dangerous felon and that her jail stay would be short.

So, could the jailers have given her a pass? Of course. Nobody would have been the wiser.

But they didn’t. And earlier this week the woman sued the Sheriff’s Department, alleging that it violated her right to practice her religion.

In my own private court of separating church and state, I’d rule against her. And I’d do so even while commending her for being such an observant woman of faith.

I’ll concede she’s a victim, of sorts. But I see her more as a symbol of exactly what’s wrong when people insist that religion trumps public policy.

That’s why it’s best, in a multi-faith society like this, to keep religion out of the public square. Or, in this case, the jail.

Many observant Muslim women believe their faith requires them to cover their heads and necks with scarves, known as hijabs, in public. It is hardly a frivolous article of clothing -- or faith -- to them.

So, how do I justify my ruling?

This way: Religion is a matter of the heart and the mind. The practice of faith, at its core, is a belief. That’s why it is, in a sense, unassailable -- no outsider can tell what’s in the heart of a true believer. In other words, your faith can never be taken away by the state or any jailer.

But religion has its attendant customs, such as the hijabs or the full-length burkas worn by many Muslim women.

I wouldn’t argue that customs are frivolous, but when they run counter to public policy or law -- such as removing a scarf while in custody -- the public law should prevail.

I have the luxury of not being a constitutional scholar, so a judge can make the ruling that matters in this case. But it’s just cases like this, seemingly isolated and perhaps unimportant, that illustrate the larger point.

And that point is that it has served the country well to separate religion from the public’s business. Those who first advanced the idea probably weren’t thinking of Muslim women in county jails on minor charges, but that’s the beauty of good, solid principles of governance.

There’s nothing wrong with efforts to accommodate the trappings of religion, such as the long-standing practice of serving fish on Fridays for Catholic students in public schools who didn’t eat meat on those days. But even that virtual mandate has diminished over the years -- as it should have.

It was a thoughtful thing to do, but shouldn’t have been, in effect, official policy.

Likewise, it would have been thoughtful if Orange County jailers had let the woman, Souhair Khatib, keep her scarf. That said, a not-so-pointless aside would be that not all Muslim scholars agree that there’s a religious requirement that women wear the hijab at all times.

When you enter the public sphere, where religious observation runs the gamut and where the rules are meant to be faith-neutral, you aren’t in church or the privacy of your home anymore. The rules may change on you.

In parting, a confession: there’s a sliver of my brain that says I may be wrong about all this. Perhaps an argument can be made that the scarf is integral to the practice of Islam and does, in a way, go to one’s heart.

But it’s not even the prospect of being wrong about religion and the law that bothers me.

What bothers me is that I have to keep thinking about it.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.