Speak Up. Speak Out!
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Speak Up, Speak Out: Discrimination Against Muslim Girls
By Ajwa Timber
Forty-two percent of Muslim parents say their kids have been bullied due to their 
religion, whether through insults or physical assaults, at least once in the past year. There are more than 1.1 million students in NYC schools. An increasing number of those students are Muslims. Others may say that Muslim women and men are not equal and are dominant over Muslim women. Muslim women students in NYC high schools go through discrimination more than Muslim men because they are easily identified in class, in athletic programs, and people buy in to stereotype against Muslim women.
Muslim students who wear hijabs have been harassed and assaulted in school. A Muslim woman who attends Portland State University was badly abused in the past.
According to KGW Staff “A woman tried to choke a Saudi Arabian exchange student with her hijab and then ripped the head covering of the woman’s head and neck at a Portland MAX station, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said. Jasmine Renee Campbell, 23, then exposed herself and rubbed the hijab against her genitals, court records said”.
Another Muslim teenager had her hijab pulled off and was pelted with eggs’ in Dublin. “The woman and her cousin are also said to have been thrown to the ground and kicked in the alleged attack in Dundrum village, south Dublin, on Sunday afternoon”(Sky News Agust 2019). Muslim women have been prohibited from wearing hijabs. They have been harassed, fired from jobs and denied access to public places.
Noor Alexandria Abukaram via USAToday
Muslim women are not even allowed to wear hijabs while participating in sports without documentation. A Muslim teen athlete, Noor Alexandria Abukaram, was disqualified in Ohio race for wearing Hijab. She wasn’t allowed to run in her hijab without special permission. The officials said cross-country runners were allowed to compete in “religious headwear” only after they received a waiver allowing them to bend the association’s uniform regulations. It was shared she had never seen a rule that barred students from wearing hijab and had not previously run into a problem. (Liam Stack October 2019).
In my personal experience I’ve run track before but I never had to have a teacher sign a waiver for me to participate.
Some people in today’s society buy into stereotypes against Muslim women. For example, some say Islam oppresses women and forces them into a subservient role, but in reality, The Quran explicitly states that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah and forbids female infanticide, instructs Muslims to educate daughters as well as sons, insists that women have the right to refuse a prospective husband, gives women the right to divorce in certain cases. They say Muslim women are quiet and soft. They think all Muslims are from the middle east. Mulsim can be from anywhere and have different backgrounds. I’m sick and tired of some people in today’s society “pegging Muslim women as “submissive” and it’s ridiculous (Heba Kanso Feb 2019).
In conculison, Muslim women students in NYC high schools go through discrimination more than Muslim men because they are easily identified in class, in athletic programs, and people buy in to stereotype against Muslim women. I wonder if Muslim men are treated the same as Muslim women?
~ Ajwa Timber, Teen Writer
