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.
Belonging to a stigmatized religious group may lead to increased feelings of rejection and discrimination.11 This is especially true for Muslim students given the high levels at which they face bullying and Islamophobia. Below are CAIR-CA's recommendations for educators and families to combat Islamophobia and bullying of students who are, or are perceived as, Muslim.
Taken as a whole, the findings of our survey provide insight into how educators can immediately address issues of bullying as students return to in-person learning. Given that data and studies demonstrate a decrease in bullying as a result of decreased in-person interactions, educators must vigilantly address any reports of bullying by increasing supervision of the aggressor and physically separating them from the victim. Such measures can reduce the amount of unstructured and unsupervised, in-person time a bully spends with victims, such as during lunch breaks, recess, and movement between classrooms.
Furthermore, the drop in reported bullying during the pandemic suggests that the collective experience of the pandemic may have also increased school staff awareness and responsiveness to student's social-emotional wellbeing.12 For example, school staff may have been more attentive to, and addressed particular forms of bullying highlighted by public media during the pandemic, such as anti-Asian bullying and harassment. 13
In addition to these steps, CAIR-CA's 2021 survey data suggests that schools can take a proactive approach to create an educational environment where no forms of bullying are tolerated. Survey data shows that students who experienced bullying were more likely to witness other students being bullied and those who did not experience bullying were less likely to witness other students being bullied. Pre-pandemic, 60.81% of those who were themselves bullied reported seeing another student get bullied for being Muslim in comparison to only 21.54% of those who were not themselves bullied but still reported seeing another student get bullied for being Muslim. This data suggests that there are schools where bullying is less commonplace than others and that unchecked bullying breeds more bullying. This data also suggests that schools can play an active role in either allowing a culture of bullying and harassment to flourish or to address it head on and stop negative behavior before it spreads.
Although the language and intent of California's current anti-bullying laws are laudable, our survey results demonstrate that it is incumbent upon school districts to first meet, and then exceed, the minimum legal requirements currently in place. Schools and school districts should take proactive steps to ameliorate the effects of bullying and harassment that occur based on actual or perceived characteristics such as religion, race, national origin, and gender. Just as bullying takes on many forms and often adapts to its surroundings, so too must bullying intervention. It is well established that taking steps to eliminate bias in the classroom can promote equity, excellence, and empowerment.14 Below are four tangible steps that CAIR-CA recommends educators take:
Schools should conduct a thorough assessment of their school's climate as it relates to bullying and harassment. During this assessment, schools should specifically look at the rates of bullying amongst Muslim students and other marginalized student populations. During the assessment, schools should also examine whether any students have experienced discrimination and harassment from school-affiliated adults.
To understand the climate and environment at a school, administrators should conduct assessments in which all members of the school's community, including teachers, students, counselors, coaches, and parents, are surveyed. 15 This assessment can then be used to inform additional anti-bullying measures adopted by schools.
Research indicates that anti-bullying school polices can fail to properly address bullying if the policies are not well-developed and effectively implemented.16 The information collected from the school's bullying assessment should be used to implement action plans and specific policies on prevention and responses to incidents of bullying. Policies should clearly define what bullying and harassment are, including setting standards and thresholds for verbal bullying. Action plans should consider how to incorporate bystander involvement to prevent bullying instead of acting as passive observers. Likewise, school policies should implement procedures on how teachers should intervene in bullying incidents and ensure that teachers receive training on how to prevent bullying and harassment in their classrooms. Teachers often report that they do not have sufficient training to address such incidents.17 Furthermore, many schools enact policies where a single administrator is responsible for investigation and discipline of reported bullying, which results in teachers ignoring conflicts between students and viewing their responsibility as limited to reporting only. Teachers should be trained and provided the resources to properly address any incident of bullying immediately, and follow-up as needed.
The policies should also make clear that schools and districts will have zero tolerance for any incidents of Islamophobia coming from a teacher or administrator. Ensuring than an anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy is properly implemented for both students and teachers provides a framework for a consistent schoolwide approach to bullying and harassment that supports an environment that rejects bullying culture. For anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies to be effective, schools must ensure the policies are effectively disseminated and implemented both among staff and students.
Without effective policies that are well-disseminated and implemented, students who are bullied are left to defend themselves against bullies. This unrealistic and cruel burden can create environments where peers, teachers, and parents act as mere bystanders, contributing to a hostile environment where bullying thrives. Therefore, there is a special duty that falls on the school community to combat bullying and to advocate for students who are not empowered to do so on their own. This includes actual intervention when witnessing bullying and/or providing bullied students and their families with the proper resources to utilize advocacy networks dedicated to combatting bullying, such as CAIR-CA.
Training for teachers and school administrators should include unbiased competency training from experts about the religious practices and beliefs of their Muslim students in order to allow educators to anticipate and identify areas of bullying. Teachers should be trained to be sensitive to class discussions about Islam and current global politics that may impact Muslim students and be mindful of these issues when creating lesson plans. Muslim students should not be made to feel that they individually represent the entire Muslim community, locally or globally. Many American Muslim students feel pressured by their peers and teachers to speak authoritatively on these subjects when they may not be equipped to do so, much less want to. Instead, teachers who do not have training to present on these subjects should look for professionals in their community who are qualified through resources such as WhyIslam.org and the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) Teaching Tolerance Program.
Educators can better ensure they provide an unbiased education about Islam and Muslims and improve overall student learning by re-examining their biases, approaching these topics with an open-mind, and learning how cultural interpretations impact learning outcomes. Teachers must be trained to examine their biases and be aware of how those biases might appear during their lessons. This is especially true when discussing the anniversary of 9/11 and other world events. Districts and schools should address the Islamophobia engendered by the discussions of 9/11 through a continuous, honest reckoning with explicit and implicit biases in the classroom and the wider world. For such class discussions, educators should consider the following best practices:
Whether an educator is aware or unaware of their biases, when an educator discusses 9/11 and other world events in a way that conflates Islam or Arabs with terrorism or inherent violence, students of Black/African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian ("BAMEMSA") communities routinely report further ostracization/increased bullying, withdrawal from class participation, and psychosomatic issues. Many attempts in the past have been made by school administrators and district boards to mitigate the liabilities that school districts face because of an educator's cultural incompetence or due to a failure to address Islamophobic bullying and other forms of bullying. By taking a proactive approach to these issues, schools and school districts can prevent them before they occur. When teachers have open discussions that do not negatively single out the Muslim community and Muslim students, the positive impact on students can be profound, as one 14-year-old private-school student from San Jose put it:
In my Global Studies Honors class, the exact opposite had happened. One of my classmates friend [sic] (the friend was not from our high school, and the classmate and her friend were non-Muslim) had posted something offensive on Instagram about 9/11. In class, she asked the teacher to talk about it and actually condemned her friend's action. For 30 minutes of the class period, we talked about why it was important to stay informed on certain issues, and how we should support the Muslim community. It was the best thing I had ever experienced--in fact, I was shocked at how open people were to discuss certain issues like this, and how rather than them making fun of me, they were supporting me.
Schools must include and implement an inclusive Ethnic Studies curriculum for all students. Ethnic Studies is a form of culturally relevant pedagogy that speaks to the histories and experiences of historically marginalized students and their communities. Ethnic Studies courses provide relevant and meaningful curriculum that affirms students identities, draws from their funds of knowledge, and builds students critical intellectualism. Importantly, Ethnic Studies also examine the social construction and evolution of race and racism through an intersectional lens.
Studies have shown that Ethnic Studies courses have strong academic benefits and can increase attendance, GPA, and credits earned among marginalized students.18 By being inclusive of the experiences, perspectives, and histories of traditionally underrepresented ethnic or racial groups, Ethnic Studies courses better engage students of color. These courses also help create school environments where students feel seen, understood, represented, respected, and welcomed. When students of color see themselves in the curriculum through Ethnic Studies courses, they have an improved sense of belonging, which in turn improves students mental health. 19
In March 2021, the California Department of Education (CDE) passed an Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) that can be used by schools across California to develop Ethnic Studies courses. However, schools must be aware that the ESMC is deficient and has inherent flaws. For example, the ESMC excludes Arab-Americans, including Palestinians, from the lesson plans and relegates discussions of Islamophobia to an appendix. The ESMC also privileges Eurocentric History over the stories of Black, brown, and indigenous peoples, thus diminishing the purpose of the Ethnic Studies courses and the issues that Ethnic Studies courses are intended to address.
Schools should instead reach out to organizations and experts in the field such as Liberated Ethnic Studies (http://www.liberatedethnicstudies.org/), an organization that has developed an inclusive and anti-racist model curriculum for schools to use. The curriculum developed by Liberated Ethnic Studies is true to the discipline of Ethnic Studies and is inclusive of BAMEMSA communities and other marginalized groups.
All California students have the right to learn in an environment free of discrimination and harassment on the basis of protected categories such as religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, or gender. California's public schools have an affirmative obligation to combat these forms of bias and a responsibility to provide an equal educational opportunity
Parents should be on the lookout for signs of bullying and harassment. Signs can include physical manifestations such as scrapes, bruises, and property stolen from their child. Other subtler changes in behavior may indicate bullying, such as a child becoming withdrawn and/or anxious, incurring excessive absences from school, or demonstrating a change in their desire to attend school.20 Unfortunately, children often do not inform their parents that they have been bullied. Thus, parents must foster relationships of trust with their children to encourage honest disclosure. Parents must also understand that it is not a child's fault if they are bullied, nor should it be considered a natural part of growing up. Parents should also make sure that their children understand that they are not to blame for being bullied or harassed.
Once aware of bullying issues, parents should immediately assert their children's right to learn in a bias-free environment. If a student is being bullied, treated differently, and/or discriminated against based on a protected characteristic, their right to learn in a safe and protected environment has been violated and that student has a right to file a complaint with their school and school district.21 Students, parents, or an advocate can file the complaint on the student's behalf. Additionally, schools must make readily available their anti-bullying policies and information related to the complaint process. This information should be available on the school or district's website. If a school or district fails to post its anti-bullying policies online, they are in violation of California's anti-bullying laws. 22
This complaint process is called the Uniform Complaint Procedure (UCP) and it is codified in the California Code of Regulations.23 Under the UCP, local educational agencies (LEAs) – which are primarily school districts and county offices of education – are responsible for investigating most complaints. The CDE is responsible for processing any appeals of LEA investigation results. UCP complaints should be as detailed as possible, outlining the who, what, where, when, and why regarding the incident. CAIR-CA attorneys are qualified to assist families in preparing and filing these complaints on behalf of students who have been bullied based on their religion or any related characteristic.
When a student files a complaint with the school and district, the principal is required by law to investigate and fix the problem. The school, including teachers and administrators, is required by law to protect the student and must take the necessary steps to stop any form of bullying. The district has 60 days from when they notify the complainant that the complaint has been received to investigate and respond with their intended plan of action. If the complainant is not satisfied with the school district's investigation or results, he or she has the right to appeal to the CDE. However, the timeline to appeal is very short and must be done within 30 calendar days of receiving the school district's written response.
Litigation is another powerful tool to promote educational equity. In extreme circumstances where the CDE fails to act in the student's interest and enforce remedies that the school districts must undertake, students and parents may consider taking their cases to court and litigating bullying claims under state and federal laws. Litigation in court can be used by bullying victims and their families to seek justice and effect systemic changes within school districts through injunctive relief and damages awards.
Parents should use the stated procedures to make complaints, then follow up to ensure a response from the school. Parents should also report all instances of bullying and discriminatory harassment to their local CAIR-CA office.
ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS
