Harun Nasrullah
One in 4 Muslim students in California had witnessed a school staff member make an offensive remarks about Islam or Muslims, according to an annual survey, which also revealed that nearly 56 per cent of Muslim students said they felt “unsafe, unwelcome or uncomfortable” in school because of their religion.
According to researchers with the California chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) it is the highest percentage of students who have expressed that sentiment since they began conducting surveys about bullying of Muslim students on campus in 2013.
The report, titled “CAIR-California’s 2021 Bullying Report: Examining Islamophobia in California Schools,” is based on findings from a statewide survey of 708 Muslim students aged 11 to 18. The findings, published on October 28, are troubling, said Amr Shabaik, civil rights managing attorney for CAIR-LA. “This year, we saw the number of students who said they felt unsafe, unwelcome or uncomfortable in school is at the highest we’ve ever seen,” he said.
“And 20 per cent of students missed school because of those feelings.This makes it all the more important to assess a school’s environment and enforce a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying,” he said.
“It is also important for schools to provide bystander training to teachers, develop an anti-racist curriculum and ethnic studies courses.”
Nearly 48 per cent of respondents said they saw a decrease in bullying after schools switched to remote learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, 32 per cent of students said they did not feel comfortable being open about their Muslim identity in school.
One in 3 female students reported their hijab being tugged, pulled or touched in an offensive manner. Overall, 47 per cent of the respondents said they were bullied in school before C0vid-19 closures.
The report also gathered examples of bullying from students across California. One 18-year-old female student in Brentwood said she was called a “terrorist,” and “Osama Bin Laden’s niece” among other racial slurs. She said she would deliberately skip school on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks because her peers would ask her if she was “plotting something.”
Because many Muslims are also of Asian descent, they faced racism and harassment during the pandemic when anti-Asian hate crimes and hate incidents surged, Shabaik said.
California has the highest number of incidents because it is also the most diverse and is home to the largest population of Muslims in the US, said Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of CAIR-LA.
“We celebrate California’s diversity and progressive attitude, but we also have higher numbers (of bullying and hate incidents) because we have a bigger population here,” he said. The survey, however, shows that bullying of Muslim students remains a common occurrence on California’s campuses, Ayloush said.
“Islamophobic harassment and bullying continue to be issues students face on a daily basis,” he said.
“It’s important to remember that this doesn’t occur in a vacuum and it doesn’t happen only in California. Political rhetoric and how Muslims are portrayed in Hollywood and the media, trickle down to schools and to society at large. School bullying is a serious problem that is detrimental to the health of our students.”