WORKPLACE BIAS AGAINST MUSLIMS, ARABS ON RISE, ADVOCATES SAY
By Alana Semuels, Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Times
Oct 3 2006

A tally of complaints jumped in 2005. Some victims may fear reporting
to authorities.

The restaurant manager from Morocco, the Armenian caterer from Syria
and the Yemeni sailor aren’t all Muslims and hail from different
homelands. But all three say they suffered discrimination at work
after Sept. 11, 2001, because of their national origin or perceptions
that they were Muslim.

Now, they are among those who have filed lawsuits through the
California offices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission –
reflecting increasing discrimination against people of Middle Eastern
and South Asian descent, according to advocacy groups.

ADVERTISEMENT"I did not think this would happen when I came here," said
Abdellatif Hadji, who moved from Morocco to the United States in 1989
and recently filed an EEOC suit against a Mendocino County restaurant
where he was a manager. "America is the land of opportunity."

Reports of workplace discrimination against people perceived to be
Muslim or Arab soared after the Sept. 11 attacks and then declined,
government statistics indicate. But some advocates say they’ve seen
a resurgence in the last year that corresponds to global political
events.

"Anytime there’s anything in the news … that is related to the
Middle East, you see a spike in hate-motivated and employment-related
incidents," said Kareem Shora, director of the legal department of
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

After 9/11, the EEOC introduced a category of employment discrimination
against people who are or are perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Middle
Eastern, South Asian or Sikh. Nationwide statistics from the EEOC
indicate that such complaints – so far exceeding 1,000 – have decreased
each year since 2002.

However, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations
says it processed more civil-rights and workplace discrimination
complaints in 2005 than ever before. The annual total jumped to 1,972
in 2005 from 1,522 in 2004. The discrepancy may indicate that victims
fear reporting discrimination to the government.

"We only see the tip of the iceberg," said Joan Ehrlich, district
director of the EEOC office in San Francisco. "It’s probably not even
reflective of the amount of discrimination going on because people
are afraid to come to the government for help."

One of Ehrlich’s cases involves Hadji, the Moroccan restaurant
manager. He filed suit Aug. 31 against the Albion River Inn.

Hadji said that in late 2004, he reproached a customer for harassing
a Tunisian waiter. Hadji said he asked the customer to leave after
the diner said, "If you don’t like it, go back to your country," and
"I fought two wars to get rid of people like you."

The restaurant’s owners ordered Hadji to apologize to the customer
or resign, Hadji said. Hadji left the restaurant and moved to San
Francisco.

"All I was trying to do was protect my staff from racial harassment,"
he said.

Ray Erlach, an attorney for the restaurant, said the evidence didn’t
support the allegations. "The Albion River Inn has had a perfect
record for 25 years of inclusivity of all races and religions,"
he said. "No one has ever complained."

Hadji’s case is similar to one filed Sept. 25 by the Los Angeles EEOC
office in which a caterer who worked for the Monterey Hill restaurant
alleged that she was called "Mrs. Bin Laden," even though she’s
Christian. The suit said the woman was told she watched too much Al
Jazeera, the Mideast-based news channel, and was subjected to other
discrimination because of her Syrian background. The eatery, located in
Monterey Park, is owned by Anaheim-based Specialty Restaurants Corp.,
operator of nearly 40 outlets, including Castaway in Burbank.

"They say that discrimination doesn’t happen in America anymore, but I
have something to say to that," said the 29-year-old Glendale resident,
who asked that her name be withheld for fear of trouble at her new job.

A representative of Specialty Restaurants said the company hadn’t
seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment.

In 2005, the Council on American-Islamic Relations received more
discrimination complaints in California than any other state – 378,
or 19% of all complaints. The council’s L.A. office said 68 of those
complaints were workplace-related, up from 56 in 2004.

The large number of California complaints partly reflects the state’s
sizable Muslim population. Still, civil rights lawyers said they were
taken aback by the volume.

"I have been surprised by the number of calls coming from the Bay
Area because we have this perception of the Bay Area being a very
accepting place," said Shirin Sinnar, an attorney with the Lawyers’
Committee for Civil Rights who represents Hadji.

Anna Park, an attorney in the EEOC’s Los Angeles office, said diverse
cities still saw a great deal of discrimination as demographics
shifted. "The cases that we bring now are not just between blacks
and whites," she said.

Research by the nonprofit Discrimination Research Center suggests
that much employment-related bias has focused on Muslims.

In a 2004 study, the center sent out 6,000 fictitious resumes to
employment firms throughout California. All applicants were similarly
qualified, but the resumes included 20 names "identifiable" as white,
Latino, African American, Asian American, Arab American or South
Asian. The name Heidi McKenzie got the highest response rate, 36.7%,
and Abdul-Aziz Mansour got the lowest, 23%.

In a case filed recently by EEOC attorney Park, seven Yemeni sailors
working for Norwegian Cruise Line were fired in rapid succession
"because they looked Muslim," Park said.

The firings occurred after the FBI began investigating a report that
a crew member had asked about the location of a cruise ship’s engine
room, arousing suspicions. The men were fired before the investigation
was completed, the suit alleged.

Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement that its actions were
"completely proper." In another instance, Ali Golchin, a San Diego
attorney who is well-known in the Iranian community, said he was
approached by seven Muslims interested in filing discrimination
lawsuits against their employers. Five were Iranians. Some were
government and university employees whose security clearances were
revoked or not renewed because of their country of origin, Golchin
said, a trend that lawyers in the California EEOC also are seeing.

Golchin said it was not just Muslims who were encountering
discrimination: A Latino friend was stopped by airport security in
Los Angeles because he looked Middle Eastern.

Since the London bombings in July 2005, tensions have worsened,
he said. "It seems like the fabric of society is falling apart."