Fired OC Islamic school principal wins sex discrimination suit

Associated Press:

Agreeing there was sex discrimination in her firing, jurors decided an elementary school principal should get $788,000 from the Islamic Society of Orange County and two of its officials.

Zakiyyah Muhammad, an African-American woman who converted to Islam, was fired two years ago as principal of the society's Orange Crescent School in Garden Grove. Muhammad lawyer Ed Connor said she challenged male superiors and gender bias led to her dismissal.

"Our case was she did not fit stereotypical notions held by Muslim men of how Muslim women should act," Connor said.

Jurors said there was no evidence to support a separate allegation of racial bias.

Muhammad said her case showed the cultural schism that can exist between U.S.-born Islamic women who believe they are equal to men.

"The revelation of the Koran is not antithetical to the Constitution of the United States," Muhammad said.

"The verdict is erroneous and will be corrected on appeal," defense attorney Barbara Fitzgerald said.

The eight-woman, four-man jury deliberated two days before deciding late Friday that the Islamic Society, school board president Fazal Mirza and board treasurer Refat Abodia should pay Muhammad $788,000, which included punitive damages of $130,000.

Muhammad claimed Mirza, the new school board president in 2003, had secretly planned to replace her with the vice principal, a Pakistani immigrant. The suit also said Mirza reneged on an agreement giving her a new two-year contract with a raise to $65,000 a year.

"She did the unthinkable," Connor said. "She questioned the authority of an elder, and she's a woman and he's a man. Those would never be legit reasons anywhere in the U.S. for firing her."

Besides discrimination, jurors convicted the defendants of intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, negligence and conspiracy to defraud.

Before the verdicts were announced, jurors sent the judge a note saying they wanted to let both sides "know and understand that we do not consider Islam to be on trial."

"We have been empowered to deliver a verdict but we are powerless to deliver peace and understanding. You must seek this elsewhere," the note read.

Muhammad, 60, who holds a master's degree and doctorate from Columbia University in New York, had been involved in Islamic education most of her career. She came from Sacramento in 1998 to run Orange Crescent.

Fired Principal Awarded $788,000