By Ali Zafar, National Post
A York Region bus driver has been reinstated after being suspended for refusing to take off his kufi – an Islamic cap – while on the job.
McGregory Jackman, a newly hired bus driver for York Region’s VIVA transit system, said he was humiliated when an inspector with his contractor, Veolia Transportation Inc., sent him home for donning the kufi at work.
“Just having to walk off the bus by someone telling you you can’t work because of your religious conviction, that was tearing me apart right then and there,” said the 43-year-old father of two, who was suspended for a week without pay.
York Region Transit general manager Don Gordon said Mr. Jackman will be back at work tomorrow, and be compensated for his time off, after discussions today between YRT and Veolia Transportation Inc.
“Mr. Jackman will be permitted to wear his kufi while driving our buses,” he said.
Until now, YRT employees who wanted religious accommodation for their clothing had to get a written statement from religious leaders to prove their faith.
That policy will be revised, Mr. Gordon said. “I believe that the individual can make the request and supply the documentation and it does not necessarily have to come from a cleric ... Our guide is the Ontario Human Rights Code,” he said.
Nadir Shirazi, a diversity consultant who met Mr. Jackman, a convert from Christianity, through his mosque and helped him through his suspension, said organizations such as the YRT need educate themselves on issues of cultural sensitivity so cases like this don’t happen.
“If we’re really talking diversity we should start practising it because York region said we have policies in place for diversity. What happens if you’re a Sikh person, or a Jewish person, or a Hindu person or a Christian, every person is going to have to bring a letter of accommodation?” he said.
Anver Emon, an Islamic law professor at the University of Toronto, said a kufi isn’t obligatory for Muslim men, but it does speak for one’s identity.
“It certainly has the effect in our current climate denoting one’s identity as Muslim. In that sense, we see it culturally becoming very prominent, in the same way that wearing a cross around your neck or a Star of David around your neck is expressive religiously, socially, in a very public way, of one’s identity,” he said.
“I think what’s interesting is whenever we think of religious garb, whether it’s the Sikh turban, or the kufi, when we see them in the public sphere, there is a strong desire to remove them, in a sense to keep them private,” Mr. Emon added.
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