Report: Muslim students in US face high levels of Islamophobic bullying

Islamophobia has turned into a pressing problem in American public schools with Muslim students subjected to relentless harassment and bullying, a new report has revealed.

The report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says hundreds of Muslim students enrolled in schools in the US state of California faced high levels of Islamophobic bullying and discrimination by their peers and adult staff, teachers included.

“Muslim students of all ages have been ostracized and mistreated in the past because of their faith and perceived, yet clearly false, association with 9/11 and other acts of terrorism,” Amr Shabaik, a civil rights managing attorney for CAIR’s California chapter, which conducted the study, was quoted as saying by Anadolu Agency.

“Often, such events manifest in the form of bullying by other students, lack of preventative and reporting measures by school officials, and insufficient training for educators as to how to mediate or de-escalate religious, racial, and ethnically-charged bullying,” he hastened to add.

More than half of the 700 students interviewed for the study [55.73 percent] said they felt unsafe, unwelcome, or uncomfortable at school owing to their Muslim identity.

This year’s study has revealed the highest level of Islamophobia in government-run schools in the US since CAIR-California began surveying in 2013.

“People have verbally abused me for being Muslim,” a young woman, 18, from Redwood City is quoted as saying in the survey report. “(They) mocked me and Islam and I have had my hijab pulled off by a classmate for no reason.”

“A 16-year-old female public school student from Orange County reported that her ‘teacher attacked [her] in front of [her] class’,” said Shabaik. “Saying things like ‘terrorist’ and ‘you don’t belong here'.”

US based relations with Iran on bullying and coercion

Apparently great friends, Iran and the USA fell out with each other in 1979 due to the Islamic Revolution of Iran, but most Iranians remember no less than 60 years of underlying bi-lateral enmity, beginning with US bullying.

Zahra Jamal, a professor at Rice University’s Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance in Houston, Texas, was quoted as saying that the CAIR report findings were consistent with a nationwide poll taken in 2020 that found 51 percent of Muslim students in kindergarten through 12th-grade public schools confronting religious bullying.

On the reason behind increasing anti-Muslim sentiments, particularly in US public schools, she said Islamophobia had always existed but it became “mainstream” after the Sept. 9 attacks in the US.

“After 9/11 and the rise of the Islamophobia industry, negative portrayals of Islam and Muslims became more mainstream and codified in media, law, politics, education, and pop culture,” Jamal said.

“Children face verbal abuse including name-callings, such as being called a raghead, sand N-word, terrorist, or child of bin Laden,” she added. “Some deal with insults against the faith of Islam often linked to 9/11 or ISIS [Daesh] and are subject to rumors that they are bombmakers.”

Last month, the United Nations officially recognized March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, but some countries chose not to support the resolution.

The resolution was adopted at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to mark the anniversary of the 2019 deadly attack on two mosques in New Zealand that left 51 people dead.

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