A Muslim passenger confronted a TSA worker after she allegedly asked his wife to remove her hijab.Ajmal Aziz claims his wife Jalissa was instructed to remove the religious head garment during a TSA pre-enrollment appointment meeting in Sidney, Montana.
The aftermath of the alleged request on September 10 was caught on camera by Aziz who can be heard clarifying the TSA worker's demands.
'So you're saying she has to take her hijab off?' Aziz said.
The worker responded: 'Yes, we were told. I've been through several trainings. I've been doing this for 12 years and they told us to make sure.'
Aziz responded by saying his 'entire family' is Muslim and had never had any problems with TSA.
'It's literally illegal to tell somebody of their faith to take their covering off their head,' Aziz replied.
'And it's got nothing to do with you, but I just wanna make sure because I'm going to push this up the wall, up the limit.
'If you're saying that that's what you gotta do, so be it. But if that's not the case, then somebody is gonna get in trouble.'
A hijab is a head covering worn by some Muslim women as a symbol of modesty.
The TSA's website said that people wearing head coverings 'undergo additional security screening, which may include a pat-down.'
The pat-down is performed by an officer of the same sex.
If anything further is needed, officers 'may ask to remove the head covering in a private screening area.'
The First and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution bar federal and state governments from making laws or rules that specifically prohibit women from wearing hijab, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
He finished: 'That is very distasteful.'
The Daily Mail has reached out to the TSA for comment.
Aziz said that the TSA worker in the video had told his recently converted wife to remove her hijab to take a photo.
He added that his wife is new to Islam, was not aware of any rules and felt 'pressured' to remove her head covering.
When he found out, he confronted the worker, who allegedly 'flat out refused to redo the photo'.
He claimed the 'most disturbing part' was that the TSA worker was unmoved after he explained the 'importance of the hijab.'
'She neglected what matters to over 2 Billion Muslims just because it wasn't part of her own belief system,' Aziz wrote in an Instagram post
The worker allegedly said that they would have to 'pay again' for a redo of his wife's photo.
'She then spent almost 10 minutes flipping through notes saying in her 12 years she was instructed hijab must be removed,' Aziz wrote.
The note she read said "the face must be shown and clear." I pointed it out that it says THE FACE".'
After that, Aziz claimed, the worker insisted that she was not taking the photo again.
Eventually, a 'higher level supervisor' allegedly got involved and 'confirmed' what Aziz had been saying.
He said: 'A hijab does not need to be removed and forcing someone to do so is a violation.
'They walked her through deleting the photo and retaking it with my wife's hijab on, without us paying again.
'In the end, my wife's dignity was restored and the staff member admitted she learned a lesson.'
Last year, New York City agreed to pay $17.5million to settle a lawsuit filed by two Muslim women who were forced to remove their hijabs for police mugshots.
Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz - of no relation to Ajmal Aziz - sued the city after their respective arrests in 2017, claiming that the New York Police Department demanded they remove their hijabs or face additional criminal charges.
In 2020, as a response to the lawsuit, the NYPD started allowing head coverings during mugshots as long as people's faces could still be seen.

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