No one, Muslim or non-Muslim, should be harassed or threatened or intimidated in school. The questions here are about priority, focus, and overall agenda. The latest FBI hate crime statistics show that 57% of anti-religious hate crimes targeted Jews, while 16% targeted Muslims. Are educators expanding anti-bullying messages to protect Jews?
Also, the AP’s citing of statistics from Hamas-linked CAIR doesn’t inspire confidence. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants and needs hate crimes against Muslims, because they’re the currency they use to buy power and influence in our victimhood-oriented society, and to deflect attention away from jihad terror and onto Muslims as putative victims. Hamas-linked CAIR, designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. Most notably, in February, a New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”
And so here Hamas-linked CAIR says that they conducted a survey of 600 Muslim students in California and found that 55 percent reported facing religion-based bullying. What criteria did Hamas-linked CAIR use to determine whether something was religion-based bullying are not? Since this survey comes from a group with such a long record of reporting falsified hate crimes, the AP reporter should have asked this question. He didn’t, of course.
“Educators update anti-bullying messages to protect Muslims,” by Michael Melia, Associated Press, March 5, 2016 (thanks to Thomas):
MERIDEN, Conn. (AP) – In response to a surge in reports of anti-Muslim bullying – students being called terrorists, having their head scarves ripped off and facing bias even from teachers – schools are expanding on efforts deployed in the past to help protect gays, racial minorities and other marginalized groups.
Civil rights organizations and other advocates have been working more closely with schools since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, stirred a new backlash that led the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Education Department to urge vigilance on the bullying of Muslims.
Were “the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino” instances of the bullying of Muslims? If the reader didn’t know better, he or she would certainly get that impression from this report. Here again we see the constant mainstream media theme: the chief victims, if not the only victims, of jihad mass murder attacks against non-Muslims are Muslims themselves.
While stressing that students have rights under the law, and that offenses should be reported, speakers at schools and mosques have also discussed how to create an inclusive culture, how Muslims are scapegoated for attacks and how non-Muslims can be allies to their peers.
“Muslim kids get bulled, gay kids get bullied because other kids are uncomfortable with them, and they show it,” said Bill Howe, a multicultural education specialist who spoke at an anti-bullying forum in December for children at Meriden’s Baitul Aman mosque. “That causes Muslim students to retreat, to be more isolated. They need to develop critical social skills so they can build relationships.”
While it may be that some Muslim students feel isolated, it also not infrequently happens that they isolate themselves. The Qur’an tells them not to take Jews and Christians as their friends and protectors (5:51), says that Muslims should be merciful to one another but harsh to unbelievers (48:29), and teaches that Muslims should hate even their relatives who are not Muslim (60:4). Obviously Muslim schoolchildren probably won’t be familiar with these verses and others like them, but they may well be quite familiar with the attitudes toward unbelievers that passages such as these inculcate.
One mother who attended the forum, put on by the office of the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, said she was relieved to learn help is available.
Shazia Choudry’s 13-year-old daughter, Maria, transferred recently from a public school after students repeatedly grabbed away her head scarf, but became frightened one day in January at her private Roman Catholic school when seventh-grade classmates peppered her, the only Muslim student, with questions about the Paris attacks.
“They were saying ‘Did you hear about this before the terror attack?’ And I was like, ‘No I didn’t,'” Maria said.
Saleha Qureshi, a member of the mosque, said that in the past several months, her son has been called a racial slur and a “terrorist” by his eighth-grade classmates at a public middle school.
Her son has grown anxious, she said, but does not want her to take matters to the principal. She checks up on him daily, letting him vent to her, but she’s not sure what more she ought to do.
“I’m just hoping things will change for him,” Qureshi said.
The Anti-Defamation League updated its anti-bias training activities after the Paris attacks to incorporate Islam.
One lesson plan tailored for junior and senior high school students has them discuss ways in which Muslims and Syrian refugees are being scapegoated as a result of the attacks. Another encourages students to discuss connections between stereotypes about Muslim people and acts of bigotry, as well as ways they can support Muslims.
Education officials in most of the ADL’s 27 U.S. regional offices have been reporting anti-Muslim incidents, and schools have been requesting materials to help deal with the bullying, said Jinnie Spiegler, the organization’s curriculum director. Among other efforts, the agency participated in a town hall meeting at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, where officials said some Muslim students were being called names.
The town hall followed others at the school on topics such as Black Lives Matter, said Andrea Lamphier, a sponsor for the school’s Muslim students club. Afterward, she said, a petition drive gathered signatures from more than a third of the student body on a letter criticizing Gov. Larry Hogan for saying the state would not welcome Syrian refugees.
While schools generally do not keep statistics on motivations for bullying, a survey of 600 Muslim students in California by the [Hamas-linked – ed.] Council on American-Islamic Relations found in October, even before the latest attacks, that 55 percent reported facing religion-based bullying – a rate twice as high as the national average of students who report being bullied at school. Officials with the group say bullying reports spiked in recent months….
In some cases, teachers have taken it on themselves to hold discussions on anti-Muslim bias. Kate Sundeen, a chemistry teacher at the Academy at Palumbo magnet school in Philadelphia, helped to set up a discussion in January that was modeled on a town hall on the Black Lives Matter movement. A panel of a dozen students spoke about their experiences after the Paris attacks, including being accosted by adults in public and harassed over headscarves.
“It was heartbreaking but important and really brave of them to share these experiences,” Sundeen said.
Almost as heartbreaking as getting murdered at a Christmas party or a music concert.