The Suffering of Muslim-American School Children

The small example reviewed below reflects the situation in one small American school district, a district which is, moreover, known for its mutliculturalism and tolerance.

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Excerpts from:

"Suffer the Little Muslims"

A look at the appalling discrimination against Middle Eastern students countenanced by Bay Area public schools

By Cristi Hegranes

2005-08-17

San Francisco Weekly, sfweekly.com

Originally published by San Francisco Weekly, 2005-08-17

http://www.sfweekly.com/2005-08-17/news/suffer-the-little-muslims/1

copyright 2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

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QUOTE: A few minutes before the bell rang to end the lunch period, Laila, a Muslim student who wears a hijab, the head scarf worn by many Muslim women, says she noticed a boy, whom she recognized but did not know, approaching them. "He walked right over to us," Laila says. "There were a lot of people standing around. He got real close, and then he just started screaming at me: '"Her father is bin Laden! She's going to blow up the school, she's going to blow it up! She has a bomb under her sweater! Everybody run, this jihad girl is going to kill us!'"

Laila says the boy and his two friends doubled over, laughing. Other students walked quickly as they passed. "I was so mad, just so embarrassed. I wanted to spit in his face," Laila says.

Laila, who is 17 and recently graduated, says she faced this kind of harassment and discrimination at school many times over the last four years. But the bin Laden incident stuck with her because so many people witnessed it, both students and teachers, and no one did or said anything about it.

.....Laila told her teacher..... "She told me that my people had caused a lot of problems in the world, and that I should understand if people were frustrated with me," Laila says.

Laila went home and told her mother and father what had happened. When her mother, Sadaf, went to see the teacher, Sadaf says, she was sent away. "She asked me to come back after the Christmas break," Sadaf says. "And then she said, 'Or whatever you people celebrate.'"

Sadaf never went back. She never filed a complaint either. END QUOTE

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QUOTE: In the midst of the so-called War on Terror, U.S. schoolchildren of Middle Eastern descent and Muslim faith have suffered discrimination of a type and ferocity that would not be tolerated if it were aimed at other minority groups.

Some overtly racist behavior has become almost common in Bay Area schools; it is student-on-student and often involves racial slurs. But there have also been death threats. And in a surprising number of incidents, teachers have joined in, calling Middle Eastern students derogatory names, promoting stereotypes about their cultures, and ignoring violence against them. Although the Bay Area is generally considered hypersensitive to even small racial slights, school districts in the region appear to have done little about anti-Arab and anti-Muslim behavior, seldom punishing students or teachers even for grotesquely racist behavior aimed at children whose sole offense is to have Middle Eastern ancestry or Islamic beliefs.

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In all the cases, the abuse was anything but subtle. It was open, raw, degrading -- and essentially ignored by the school districts in which it had been practiced. END QUOTE

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QUOTE: A 10th-grade Muslim girl who wanted to try out for the drill team at Washington High was told the day before tryouts that she couldn't be on the team. "They told me not to even try out because they couldn't trust me because I was dangerous, and they said I was too ugly with 'that rag on my head,'" the 16-year-old girl, who asked not to be named because she still attends the school, says. END QUOTE

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QUOTE: In March 2004, a substitute teacher told Shana that she would not teach someone who outwardly supported terrorism. When Shana became upset and insisted that neither she nor her family supported any such thing, Shana's mother, Samina, alleges, the substitute responded, "Well then what is that on your head?" END QUOTE

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QUOTE:.......an Iranian-American sophomore, Hassan Rahgozar, was beaten in a school bathroom in May. Apparently at the request of the students who planned the attack, the beating was videotaped and later posted on the Internet. The family pressed charges against the two attackers and is suing the West Contra Costa Unified School District for failing to protect Hassan. Bill Berg, the family's lawyer, says Hassan was also attacked earlier, in April, and repeatedly endured racial slurs. (The West Contra Costa school district refused to comment on the pending lawsuit.) END QUOTE.

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QUOTE:.......a Muslim girl filed a lawsuit in January, alleging that her teacher, Wes Mix, used religious slurs against her and physically yanked off her religiously mandated head scarf last year. Jefferson Parish School District Superintendent Diana Roussel recommended the teacher's termination last July, but the school board overruled the decision in a closed-door hearing....END QUOTE.

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QUOTE:17-year-old Jana Elhifny and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Washoe County School District last October. The suit alleges that nothing was done after Jana received a death threat and was routinely verbally assaulted by classmates based on her religion. END QUOTE

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QUOTE:.......he became a target for his eighth-grade English teacher, Brian Kelly, just after Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout the year, Kelly made fun of the student's ethnic name, calling him "Trash Can," which rhymes with his Persian name. Dianati and several of her son's classmates say the name-calling went on all year. END QUOTE

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QUOTE:When it was Amir's turn to present his report, he got up before the class, leaned his poster board of photographs on the rim of the chalkboard, and gave his five-minute report. As he finished, he asked if there were any questions. After their reports, other students had been asked about family resemblances and holiday celebrations.

"His teacher asked him when his family came to America. Then she asked him if his family in Iraq supported America in the war," Ariana says. Amir answered that his family had been in America for about 15 years, and he didn't know all of his family members in Iraq, so he didn't know how they felt about the war. "Then she said, 'So you don't know if they are terrorists?'" Ariana says. Amir just shook his head.

Amir received a 75 on his report. On the scoring sheet used to tally points, he received zero out of 10 points for "ability to answer questions about family history." END QUOTE.

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Originally published by San Francisco Weekly, 2005-08-17

http://www.sfweekly.com/2005-08-17/news/suffer-the-little-muslims/1

Copyright 2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

This article at:
http://www.secularmuslims.com/sufferchildren.php

Copyright 2005-2008, Humanist and Secular Muslims (HaSM), www.secularmuslims.com