The Council on American-Islamic Relations is the largest American Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. CAIR’s mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil liberties, promote justice, and empower American Muslims. CAIR California is the organization’s largest and oldest chapter, with offices in the Greater Los Angeles Area, the Sacramento Valley / Central California, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
This report is the fifth biennial bullying report published by the California Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA). These reports evaluate the current school climate for California Muslim students between the ages of 11 and 18.
The purpose of this report, and the ones preceding it, is to understand the extent to which Islamophobia, the prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims, manifests itself in the school environment in the form of bullying and discrimination from peers, teachers, administrators, and other adult school personnel.
In general, school bullying is understood as causing one to feel unsafe, fearful, or unable to fully participate in school. 1 Bullying involves a real or perceived imbalance of power, with the powerful person or group attacking those who are less powerful. Bullying may be physical (hitting, kicking, spitting, pushing), verbal (taunting, malicious teasing, name calling, threatening), or emotional (spreading rumors, manipulating social relationships, extorting, intimidating). 2 Bullying can occur in person or electronically through the creation and transmission of public posts, messages, texts, sounds, or images.3
Youth involved in bullying – as both victims and aggressors – are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors than their uninvolved peers.4The negative effects of bullying persist even after the abuse has stopped and are linked to a wide range of physical, mental, social, and economic challenges in adulthood.5
CAIR-CA’s 2021 report is the result of a survey distributed between January 2021 and August 2021 asking Muslim students in California about their experiences with bullying and Islamophobia from August 2018 to August 2021.
The survey examined how the pandemic affected the way these students experienced bullying. The survey also examined how Muslim students felt about their school environment and whether they experienced any discrimination from teachers, school administrators, and other adult school personnel.
The survey was conducted by the four CAIR-CA offices covering the Greater Los Angeles, Sacramento Valley / Central California, San Diego, and San Francisco Bay Area areas. 891 individuals responded to our survey. 708 of the respondents were eligible to take the survey in that they were: 1) between 11-18 years-old; 2) Muslim; 3) attended school in California; and 4) attended either a public school, non-Islamic private school, or charter school.
The survey was divided into three sections. The first section asked for respondents’ demographic information. The second section requested information about the type of bullying and discrimination respondents experienced at school as either the victim or bystander. The third section asked respondents how they perceived their school environment and whether adults in their school had engaged in Islamophobic behavior.
CAIR-CA’s 2021 survey finds that bullying remains a common occurrence that has disproportionately impacted Muslim students. CAIR-CA’s 2021 and 2019 reports show that Muslim students reported being bullied at more than twice the reported national average of 20%.
The trends in bullying and the current rate at which Muslim students experience bullying provide insight to community organizations, educators, school administrators, and parents on how best to address and prevent Islamophobic bullying.
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