Muslim adults fear for their lives daily because of their given names, and now this mentality seeps into the minds of young Muslim children everywhere.
Source/Credit: SpilledChai.Com
By Sumeera Jattala | September 16, 2015
Growing up Muslim, you assimilate yourself to be cautious of your actions in a post 9/11 society. That includes being weary while going through security, hoping that your name and skin color does not insinuate that you must be randomly selected. Unfortunately, this mentality found its way outside of airports and train stations and into the educational system.
Schools were built to be a safe space for a young mind to explore one’s knowledge and creativity and nurture it into success. This was not the case for fourteen year old Ahmed Mohamed of Irving, Texas. The Huffington Post reported that Ahmed with the passion for engineering and robotics built a clock inside his pencil case. He brought his clock to school to show teachers what he built, and instead of being applauded for his ability to think outside the box, he was met with backlash. Teachers and his principal threatened Ahmed with expulsion and accused him of making a bomb. This escalated to Ahmed being handcuffed and sent to a juvenile detention center, where the fourteen year-old was questioned without his parents in sight. Following the incident, his school district released a statement reminding students to not bring certain items to school.
In sexual assault cases, women are asked what they were wearing. Trayvon Martin was deemed suspicious because he was wearing a hoodie. What was Ahmed Mohammed wearing the day he was profiled and interrogated? A NASA t-shirt. The stereotyping goes past just looks and skin color, but rather one’s name alone is a factor to isolate a child from the rest. Islamophobia found its way within schools, not just through bullying within peers but being terrorized by school officials. No parent or adult ever wants to tell a Muslim child that they cannot be imaginative because others might stereotype or profile them. This profiling escalated from remarks and name-calling, to a child named Mohamed being told that his invention seems like a bomb. A young child’s ingenuity should not be mistaken for terrorism. This is the weight of walking around with a Muslim name, because the name alone can be a reason for one to fall under scrutiny. Muslim adults fear for their lives daily because of their given names, and now this mentality seeps into the minds of young Muslim children everywhere.
Last year, DailyMail reported thirteen year old Jamie Edward’s experiment in United Kingdom. He created a nuclear reactor in his school’s laboratory, smashing atoms together to create nuclear fusion. School officials initially had slight dismay only for Edward to reassure that will not blow the school up. After that, he was being commended for his record-breaking achievement and ambition. There are so many key words in this story that if it was linked to a young Muslim engineer they would be stopped from making anything of that nature right away, and face consequences that no young creative engineer should face.
President Obama, Hilary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg and many other personalities have spoke out about the situation, which is a small step of acknowledgment of a problem rooted from years of profiling and Islamophobia because now it shows the impact it has on our younger generation. As a result of what happened, Ahmed Mohamed vowed to never bring an invention to school again. Students should be applauded for their interest, passions, and ambitions, especially within their schools. Yet with a problem like this looming among us it horrifically causes children to be scared of exploring their intellect and utilize their curiosity. A little over this past decade, countless of Muslim students were stopped by their parents for being innovative at school because of the consequences of having a Muslim name.
This is the power of walking around with a Muslim name. Something we often underestimate when we tease those who go by Moe rather than their given name, is the weight of being named Mohamed. Nonetheless this dialogue attends to the countless number of Muslim adults and children who alter their names to live without fear in a post 9/11 society.
#IStandWithAhmed
#istandwithahmed #islamophobia #ahmed mohamed #SMRA
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Sumeera Jattala is a third-year student pursuing journalism at university of California, Riverside. Sumeera is Ahmadiyya Times correspondent and co-founder of SpilledChai.com.
Read original post here: Perspective: When ingenuity meets Islamophobia
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