Sumaya Ali was in her 10th grade world history class this fall when she said her teacher asked his students: “Who thinks all Muslims should die?”
The teacher at Leuzinger High School in the South Bay city of Lawndale had been talking about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his view on Muslims, she said. A couple of students raised their hands. On another occasion, after the teacher was told by another student that Ali was Muslim, Ali said he told her, “Oh, you’re a terrorist” and then added a few seconds later: “That’s not what I think. That’s what America thinks.”
“I felt really uncomfortable,” said the 15-year-old Ali, who is Muslim and was transferred to a different class after her brother complained to administrators late last month. “By saying all Muslims should die, he’s saying my family should die too.”
An attorney from the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Los Angeles said a formal complaint was faxed to the school and the Centinela Valley Union High School District on Monday. District Superintendent Gregory O’Brien said Tuesday that the district will fully investigate the complaint and will take “appropriate action.”
“We are unequivocally opposed to any sort of discrimination, whether it’s (as a result of) race or ethnicity, religious beliefs or affiliation or national origin,” O’Brien said, noting the district has an anti-bullying policy as well as a non-discrimination and harassment policy that applies to students and staff. “We completely respect every single student … and we support their rights and will do everything to protect them.”
STATE BULLYING FIGURES
Ali’s experience is not isolated. More than half of Muslim students surveyed in California last year reported being subjected to at least one form of religion-based bullying, which is about twice as high as the nationwide average for all students, according to a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Los Angeles, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization known as CAIR.
Fifty-five percent of Muslim students ages 11 to 18 reported experiencing bullying as a result of their religion, according to the CAIR-California report, “Mislabeled: The Impact of School Bullying and Discrimination on California Muslim Students.” Meanwhile, 28 percent of U.S. students in grades 6-12 experienced bullying as of 2011 while 20 percent in grades 9-12 experienced bullying as of 2013, according to federal government data.
In California, more male students who are Muslim reported experiencing bullying than female Muslim students — 60 percent to 52 percent — although the percentage of females who reported experiencing discrimination by a teacher or administrator was slightly higher, the CAIR report stated.
Fifty-two percent of Muslim students surveyed said they experienced verbal abuse as a result of their religion, 19 percent said they experienced cyber-bullying and 9 percent said they had been physically bullied because of their religion, according to the CAIR survey of 621 students enrolled in public and non-Muslim private schools throughout the state.
The survey’s results were released Oct. 30 to coincide with the end of National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.
“We know that when students are targeted with bullying today most of the time, it is because of their perceived sexual orientation or their religion or their race or perhaps the language they speak at home” or their weight, said Dave Reynolds, project director for the Anti-Defamation League’s World of Difference Institute in the Pacific Southwest Region. The Institute offers anti-bias and bullying prevention programs for students, staff, families and others related to schools and the workplace. “It’s much more about picking out differences and targeting students because of that” rather than beating up a kid to take his lunch money, he said.
When left unchecked, bullying contributes to an environment where youth feel it’s acceptable to express and act on feelings of prejudice, including participating in gaming sites that promote hate messages or involvement with hate groups, he said.
TEACHER DISCRIMINATION
One of the most striking findings in the survey was that one in five students said his administrators, coaches, school safety officers or teachers made offensive comments about his religion or allowed other students to make offensive comments at school, said Fatima Dadabhoy, a senior civil rights attorney at CAIR-Los Angeles and the lead author of the report.
Meanwhile, 27 percent of girls wearing a hijab, or an Islamic head scarf, reported such discrimination, according to the report.
“Teacher discrimination gets left out of the conversation in bullying a lot of the time,” Dadabhoy said. “We don’t discuss biases of the teacher in the classroom. That’s something that really affects American Muslim students.”
At Los Angeles Unified School District, the Office of Human Relations, Diversity and Equity has teamed up with the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Anti-Bullying Coalition — a collaboration of government and nonprofits — to “sponsor city-wide bullying prevention and response policies, practices and campaigns,” Judy Chiasson, LAUSD’s human relations, diversity and equity coordinator, said in a written statement.
Any parent who suspects that a child has been bullied should report their concerns to their school’s administration, she said.
MOST FEEL SAFE
While 83 percent of Muslim students polled said they felt safe, welcome and respected at their school, 16 percent of the survey’s respondents said they were either unsure or disagreed. And though 76 percent of the Muslim students said they felt comfortable participating in class discussions about Islam or countries where Muslims live, that number decreased by four percentage points from a 2012 survey done by the same organization.
“Many students’ comments referenced increased problems in the classroom during discussions about 9/11, mainly due to teachers either failing to address harassment by other students against Muslim students or discriminating against Muslim students themselves,” the report stated.
To minimize bullying, CAIR recommended that schools ensure teachers receive training on how to prevent bullying and harassment in their classrooms and that parents look for signs of bullying and harassment in their children, who may be reluctant to call attention to these issues. Teachers should also be sensitive to lesson plans about Islam, 9/11 and global politics and “refrain from making their American Muslim students feel as though they must answer for all Muslims,” the report states.
The organization also recommended that a federal anti-bullying law be passed to prohibit bullying and harassment based on a student’s religion, race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.
