Fatma

I dream of ways to tell my classmates that Islamophobia is not OK.

Throughout all of my years in school, I have always known the value of my rights. Although I have problems retaliating to bullies, I have always stood up for myself when someone was making fun of my culture or my beliefs. Recently, I was in a situation where I felt extremely uncomfortable. In English class, we had to write about what we would do if we had to sell our son to the devil. I felt like the teacher was making a joke but she wasn’t. And I knew I definitely wasn’t OK with writing about the devil in this way. It made me feel weird; I felt like my words could be given the wrong type of power and they may become a reality. So, instead of doing the work, I wrote an essay on how the curriculum is corrupt and how I didn’t think that the devil was an acceptable topic in an English class full of depressed teenagers who want to talk about stabbing each other.

Weeks later, people in my school are talking about how I fought the system. It’s a great feeling to know that I’ve made an imprint on my school, but I have a feeling that I’ll be sent to the principle’s office very soon.

Basically, if I had ever heard anyone making fun of me because I’m a Muslim, I know I couldn’t sit there and take it. And this is where the problem started for me. In my religious education class, my teacher taught a lesson that hit home. She showed us videos of UK politicians making fun of Muslims and immigrants, and the viral video of an innocent Muslim woman in a hijab being pushed onto train tracks, because the man who did it felt “threatened” by her presence. I was excited that my teacher was attempting to make the other students recognize that not all Muslim people are killers.

But when she asked the question, “Is it OK to be Islamophobic?” I was shocked with what I had heard from my class. The room full of privileged, white teenagers all answered with a clear and crisp “yes!” They proceeded to explain how it’s OK to be Islamophobic if they are scared. My teacher shot a look at me and saw the tears developing in my eyes. Once class was over, she told me to stay behind so that I could speak to her. She told me that I shouldn’t let these comments from the class affect me. I replied by telling her how I thought she was really cool for breaking out of the curriculum and planning a lesson like this.

But to add to this, a specific girl in my class gossipped to her friend about how that teacher was racist. It angered me to hear that a white girl had the nerve to say a teacher was being racist toward her. It annoyed me to know that when just one lesson wasn’t focused on her culture, she was quick to point fingers. Just because she felt uncomfortable, she thought she could get away with saying something like this. She must have forgotten about the times when her and her friends have ignored me because I didn’t engage in English culture. She must have forgotten about those times when her friends would jokingly shout “allahu akbar,” making fun of the words that mean God is the greatest. I felt even more crazy when my own friend went and said that she agreed with this girl!

I don’t care if I have to stand on my own in this argument. I’m sick of being the person who is constantly being pointed at for believing in Islam. I wish my classmates would realize that not all Muslims are terrorists and that not all immigrants will take their jobs. It’s really frustrating for me to think about. ♦