June 01, 2017•Update: June 02, 2017
By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
A California school district’s plan to combat what activists and school officials call an epidemic of Islamophobic bullying may be derailed as a coalition of opponents prepares to challenge the proposal in court.
The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) recently announced a plan to address the bullying of Muslim students as part of a wider effort aimed at combating bullying in the school system.
“As we have done with other vulnerable segments of our student population, our intent in drawing attention to the bullying of Muslim students,” the school district said on its website.
“In particular, [the program] is to raise awareness of the issue and to promote tolerance and understanding.”
However, the plan has run afoul of a number of groups and six parents led by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund that are suing on the grounds of what they say is preferential treatment.
The fund filed the lawsuit in March against SDUSD, five members of its board and the district’s superintendent. The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the program's implementation.
In court documents, the coalition alleged that the program is “a subtle, discriminatory scheme that establishes Muslim students as the privileged religious group within the school community.
“Students of other faiths are left on the outside looking in, vulnerable to religiously motivated bullying, while Muslim students enjoy an exclusive right to the School District’s benevolent protection.”
The charge was strongly denied by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose San Diego chapter helped the school district craft the anti-Islamophobia program.
- Muslims bullied
The San Diego chapter’s executive director, Hanif Mohebi, told Anadolu Agency that 55 percent of Muslim students in San Diego public schools had reported being bullied based on their religion “in some way shape or form”.
That is nearly twice the national average, he said.
“We’re not asking for privilege,” Mohebi said. “We’re just saying include us when you’re talking about bullying, include that there are students that are being bullied because of their religion.”
Jose Velazquez, one of the parents represented in the lawsuit, said the district prematurely approved the CAIR lesson plans and potentially left itself vulnerable to having the Muslim advocacy group implement its own agenda.
“As a parent this brings great distress and concern for all kids who will be outcast by the very SDUSD who are supposed to protect all kids,” he said in a statement given to Anadolu Agency by the fund.
The district has denied giving preferential treatment to Muslim students. It declined a request by Anadolu Agency to provide specifics about the program, citing pending litigation.
In defending the decision to implement the anti-Islamophobia program, school board President Richard Barrera and Vice President Kevin Beiser pointed to a national poll that indicated Muslim students are particularly vulnerable to bullying based on their religion.
Both are men listed as defendants in the suit.
“Our goal was not to endorse a religion, but rather to assure a vulnerable segment of our community that our schools are safe places for them, just as they are safe spaces for all children,” they wrote in a San Diego Union-Tribune op-ed.
- Heart-wrenching
Muslim students and their parents were reluctant to discuss the challenges they face in school when Mohebi contacted them Anadolu Agency’s behalf.
He said one student had previously faced recrimination from teachers and school officials after talking to the media about discrimination he had encountered.
“It has had a chilling effect just because in our small community here people talk to people,” Mohebi said. “It’s tough to get people to open up.”
During a July 2016 public Board of Education meeting, a 10-year-old student said a classmate who was wearing high heels purposely stepped on her hand “and she took her time on it”.
The pupil added: “I had to scream to have her remove her foot. I could not stop crying.”
She said the same classmate had earlier aggressively questioned her about why her mother was wearing a headscarf.
The student was one of a half dozen students and parents who spoke about the dangers of Islamophobic bullying in school.
In their op-ed, Barrera and Beiser called board meetings in which such testimony was given “truly heart-wrenching to watch”.
An initial court date has yet to be scheduled.
