Outrage after New York Public Schools Forced Girls to Wear Hijabs in Order to Promote Diversity and Inclusion

Some people are outraged because the World School of Inquiry in Rochester, New York, celebrated World Hijab Day on Feb. 5 by encouraging female students to wear hijabs (video below).

Hijabs are the headscarves some Muslim women wear. More than 100 girls wore them at the school on World Hijab Day.

"Our school believes in diversity and inclusion," World School of Inquiry Principal Sheela Webster told WHAM.

The idea came from a Muslim student, Eman Muthana, who asked Webster for permission in a letter: "World Hijab Day invites every woman to wear the hijab for a day so they would experience how women who wear the hijab are treated by others. The purpose of this is to educate, and feel part of the school community."

Some people slammed the school for allowing girls to wear the hijabs by claiming it violated separation of church and state. The school district got about two dozen negative phone calls.

"From our perspective, religion was not the center of the instructional process here," Webster told WHEC. "It was actually around learning about the cloth."

"[Muthana is] not trying to make anybody else anything other than who they are, but she just wants people to accept who she is," Van White, school board president, told WHEC.

The school notified parents before the event via robocall after the media started asking questions, but White admits that parents should have been notified earlier.