American Muslim woman awarded $5 million in lawsuit against AT and T for workplace discrimination

Washington, May 6 (ANI): A Muslim woman in USA has won five million dollars in punitive damages from AT and T, a multinational corporation, in workplace discrimination suit.

The former Kansas City woman, Susann Bashir, who converted to Islam in 2005 said she was harassed for years at AT and T, Fox News reports.

She said that the abuse went to the extent that in 2008 her boss snatched her headscarf and exposed her hair.

A Jackson County jury on Thursday awarded Bashir five million dollars against her discrimination lawsuit, along with 120,000 dollars in lost wages and other actual damages.

Bashir said in court documents that her work environment immediately changed after she converted to Islam, with her co-workers passing harassing comments about her religion.

Bashir worked at AT and T's office in Kansas City for 10 years as a fiber optics network builder before being fired from her 70,000 dollar job-a-year.

She claimed she endured religious discrimination nearly every day of the final three years at her office, including being asked if she was going to blow up the building and being called a "towelhead" and a terrorist.

AT and T has, however, said that it disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal against it.

Bashir after winning the case said: "I have mixed feelings. I'm happy not to be reporting to that management structure. But it's hard in this economy to find a job with that level of compensation. I didn't want to lose my job, because I felt I was doing good work." (ANI)