To ease fears, US Muslim schools reach out to neighbors
released this month showed a 57 percent spike in the number of anti- Muslim hate crimes recorded in the US last year compared with 2015.
In the 10 days following US Election Day on Nov. 8, physical and verbal attacks against Muslims ticked up 6 percent compared to the same period the prior year, the Southern Poverty Law Center said. being hammered out, but the purpose is clear, CISNA’s Azmat said: “Be open to outsiders.”
A recent study of about a third of the nation’s Muslim high schools conducted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia found that the students did not vary much from their non-Muslim peers in terms of interests and sense of being American.
“These are very, very typical kids in a lot of ways, but also see themselves as Muslims and objecting to some things in American society just as a lot of Evangelical (Christian) and Jewish kids would,” said Charles Glenn, an education policy expert who led the study of Islamic schools.
Many of the nation’s Muslim schools have kept a low profile since the first school opened in the US roughly 30 years ago, partly to avoid harassment.
The outreach efforts could face similar resistance to those of US public schools that have attempted to teach about Muslims in social studies classes. Some parents in San Diego, California, and Chatham, New Jersey, recently objected to lessons about Muslims.
“You have given your alliance to people that are against our own Constitution,” Alice Kaiser, who is part of a group opposing the San Diego Unified School District’s antiIslamophobia program, said about the program at a school board meeting late last month.
The Al-Fatih Academy in Reston, Virginia, has been used as a model by CISNA for community outreach.
On Election Day, a group of Al-Fatih eighth graders concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric asked voters at a polling station about the political issues they cared about most. Some of the longest conversations were with Trump supporters, many of whom said they had never spoken to a Muslim before, according to principal Afeefa Syeed.
“At the end of the day, if we have more of these conversations and actions, it’s better for everyone,” Syeed said.