Muslim woman wins bar dress lawsuit

An update about a case I blogged about a few months ago: Fata Lemes, a 33-year-old Muslim woman of Bosnian origin who sued her employer, a Mayfair bar, for sexual discrimination after they made her wear a low-cut and revealing red dress at work, has won her case (HT: Islamophobia Watch), albeit a relatively tiny sum (£2,919.95). The Times report says that the employer is now seeking to re-open the case after they saw her Facebook pictures, one of which show her wearing “a plunging T-shirt revealing her cleavage”.

Of course, a Muslim woman shouldn’t be working in a bar, but she does not wear hijab and was not seeking to do so at work. This is about women maintaining dignity in the workplace, and women shouldn’t be expected to present themselves as “sexually available” to male drinkers (male bar staff were not being expected to wear the undignified uniform). What she wears on the beach is of no importance; women (and men for that matter) do wear much less on the beach in the West than they do at work, and most beaches are not full of leery half-drunks with wandering hands. There is an implication that she is a hypocrite, but if this was not a Muslim woman, the idea of undressing on the beach while expecting dignified dress at work would not seem at all strange.