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Newsela PRO/CON on Syrian refugees and the effect this issue has on Islamophobia

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Newsela article on student who was kicked off of a flight for speaking arabic

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Newsela article on speaking out against Anti-Muslim bullying

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Photo essay on being Muslim in America

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muslims in america culture clash shock ziyah gafic photographs portraits

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Photographer Ziyah Gafic provides an intimate portrait of America's Islamic community

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What Muslim parents tell their children about Islamophobia

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On January 5, the Council on American-Islamic Relations offered a new service for the Muslim American families among its members: It released a guide titled "A Muslim parent's guide to talking to children about acts of violent extremism." It was meant to help parents guide their children through a new world in which the tide of Islamophobia, as well as the threat of violent extremism, is growing.

The guide reflects a difficult new truth: Muslim parents in the US and Canada today no longer just have to worry about giving their kids the "birds and the bees" talk. They must now also give the Islamophobia and extremism talk, helping their children prepare for anti-Muslim bullying and harassment, a political climate that often treats them as alien interlocutors, and, yes, the threat of radicalization.

I wanted to find out more about how these conversations were playing out in the real world, so I reached out to some Muslim parents and asked them how they're raising these issues with their kids and what they're saying. Here's what they told me. These interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Amanda Quraishi, activist, Austin, Texas:

My kids ask me things like, "What's going on in Syria?" and, "Why are guns legal?" and, "What do the terrorists want?" Often the questions come from things they hear on television or on the radio. They also come home from school with some pretty big questions after talking with their friends. Media is omnipresent in this society, and kids get exposed to all kinds of things.

My daughter came home from camp one day and was so upset because another girl had found out that she is Pakistani American. The girl told my daughter that Pakistanis are terrorists. It was very upsetting.

There's a lot of anxiety around 9/11 every year at school because there are only a couple Muslim kids in the class, and they get stared at or whispered about during the 9/11 discussions. A few weeks ago both my kids were playing an online game, and one of the other players had a username "KillAllMuslims" - they were deeply troubled by it.

I try to help them understand that most of the time Islamophobia is coming from a place of fear and uncertainty. I encourage them to look at people who are spouting Islamophobia with sympathy, and ask them to be patient. And of course, if anyone threatens them or is abusive, they know to report those people immediately. They know they can always talk to me directly about things that happen with other adults, and I will take it seriously.

Hena Zuberi, editor in chief of MuslimMatters.org, Washington, DC:

My girls are 15 and 13, and my boys are 10 and 8. A few days ago I was running late to pick them up from school and I saw they were on the sidewalk and a police officer was talking to them. My heart almost burst - he was asking them where their parents were, but my mind kept thinking back to Ahmed Mohamed, the clock kid.

I have found myself having talks with my sons, making them aware of the general perception of bearded, brown men. As they grow up, they will be profiled; that is a fact. They have to be ready to face that reality with grace so they don't put themselves in further danger. My 10-year-old is a jokester, and I have had to categorically tell him that he cannot make any bomb jokes in school ever, that ranting on online forums is not an exercise in free speech, as Muslim men have been arrested for thought crimes.

I don't want my children to grow up thinking they have to apologize for acts that have nothing to do with them, or to develop self-hate or internalize the hostility toward them. I also don't want them to look at every injustice in life or every altercation or every incident through the lens of "Islamophobia," because that is not a healthy way to live. I want them to grow up unapologetically Muslim.

Mariam Ahmed, lawyer, working temporarily in Dubai:

I have two boys: Hamza is 8, and Maaz is 5. My kids are too young to know about current events aside from what I mention to them myself. I told Hamza when the Paris attacks happened, and at that time we also discussed 9/11 and the rise of ISIS in Syria.

I told him that these are bad guys who are committing crimes for their own reasons - for power, land, money, revenge. And some of them are using Islam as a way to justify some of their actions.

I had a lot of anxiety when broaching the subject with Hamza. I live in a Muslim-majority country at the moment, but I am preparing them and myself for the time when we move back to America and they will have to face the reality of life as American Muslim children.

Once I return, my concern will be that people will use their faith as a means of targeting them, and because they are growing up in Dubai right now they won't know how to respond. But I'm also hopeful that they will have a nuanced and sophisticated view of the world and of Islam by that point and can be articulate in explaining things.

My advice in the past has been to try to befriend the bully. Sometimes people just need to realize all the things they have in common, and the urge to bully is reduced. I'm trying to encourage them to be confident and defend themselves from bullying of all kinds.

My other concern is that they may be tempted to step away from their faith if it just becomes too difficult to deal with the backlash. However, I'm hopeful things will never get quite so bad.

Walid Darab, host of a podcast on everyday life for Muslims in the West, Washington, DC:

I have a teenage daughter and an almost 2 1/2-year-old boy. The boy I'm not that worried too much about right now, but with the girl it's been very tricky because she's a hijabi [meaning she wears a hijab] and she goes to a public school.

One of her teachers makes comments that I'm very, very close to contacting the school about. She mentions things like terrorism, and then she just looks straight at my daughter. It's like, "Okay, cool. You're a professional? You're a teacher?"

I told my daughter, "High school and college, these are preparing you for the real world, because you will join a company and you won't like your manager, you won't like your co-worker, or they might say something that you don't like. It doesn't mean that you're going to come home and complain about it. You got to roll with it. You have to change. You got to be flexible."

I also told her, "You know what? You can't stop somebody from looking at you. I can't talk to your teacher and say, 'Hey, how come you looked at my daughter when you said this word?'"

She's at the age where she's starting to inquire about [politics and world events]. She'll say, "Some people say ISIS is good; what do you think?" She'll ask me these questions. We talk about it, but I stress to her that, first of all, there's nowhere on this earth that you would want to live other than in America.

We talk about politics, because it's a juicy topic. It's juicy. Everybody likes to blame other people. "If America did this, if Palestine did this, and blah, blah, blah." But we're living in America. She has to go to school. She has to get A's. She has to go to college. We talk about it, but we talk about it with the underlying thing that, yes, it does happen. To better that in the grand scheme of things is educate yourselves and be a better Muslim here. We leave it at that, and we just move on.

Naheed Mustafa, journalist, Toronto, Canada:

You try to have these conversations with young people, and at the same time you feel like you're kind of ruining things for them. You're basically telling them that life isn't going to be a party. You actually have to worry about what you look like, and you have to worry about how other people see what you look like.

My eldest has trouble backing down. She wants to fight every fight. But that can be crippling. It's like never being able to get off the internet. So that's a conversation I've had to have with her, that you need to be able to walk away from some things.

The other thing is, who's the person? Is this a friend of yours who has genuine questions, or is this a discussion in class? Is this a professor who holds an inordinate amount of power over you and you're beholden to them, which is also a reality?

That's the other part of this that can be very frustrating, because it's the idealism of the young. It's that age-old problem where young people think old people have sold out. When I say, "You need to choose your battles," sometimes the perception might be what I'm saying is, "You need to just eat people's shit for a while," which is not what I'm saying. Managing your way in the real world requires that. You can't approach your boss in the same way that you can approach somebody who's on the train with you or whatever.

Asma Uddin, lawyer and founder of AltMuslimah, Washington, DC:

I have two kids. My daughter is 8 1/2, and my son is 4. They're not really dealing with this stuff in their day-to-day life, and they're not, thankfully, dealing with any sort of bullying comments by their peers. They're mostly still shielded from the headlines. I haven't really broached the topic head on with them. Since they're young, I'm trying to establish the foundations that my parents established for me, which was a really solid understanding of religion and God. I think of it as an interactive, personal relationship with God where we know that he's always present, that's he's protective.

I think that when they did that for me, I'm not really sure that it was even intentional on their part to do it that way, but it just happened because of that foundation as I grew up and seeing and being exposed to more and more sociopolitical issues related to Islam. Definitely my childhood wasn't free of that.

Starting at least in high school and definitely beyond, I started dealing with questions that became more pronounced, especially because I used to wear headscarves when I was in college and law school, and around the time of 9/11 I was wearing a headscarf. That automatically makes you a spokesperson and gets attention that you might not otherwise get.

I fully expect that as my kids grow up, they're going to confront these issues and have a lot of questions and probably go through a lot of their own agonizing moments. I think I'm well-positioned to help them navigate that, because I went through it as well.

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"The talk": 6 Muslim parents on what they tell their kids about Islamophobia

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On January 5, the Council on American-Islamic Relations offered a new service for the Muslim American families among its members: It released a guide titled "A Muslim parent's guide to talking to children about acts of violent extremism."

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Article on the impact of Islamophobia on one American woman

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Like many, I watched in shock as the terror attacks unfolded in Paris last November. ISIS, the same group that had killed 43 innocent people in a double suicide bombing in Lebanon the day before, was now attacking Parisians. I checked Facebook to see if my Parisian friends were safe and noticed two things: First, several friends had messaged me to ask if my friends in Paris were safe (I lived there in 2008). Second, there was a feature enabled called the Facebook Safety Check that lets users mark themselves "safe" after an attack, earthquake, or other disaster.

I was relieved to know that my friends were OK, but I also felt the weight of the questions that followed in my mind: Why didn't my family have access to the same safety feature following the bombing in Lebanon? Are some lives more worthy of mourning?

And as an educator, I couldn't help but wonder: What impact would the media's asymmetric attention have on our students who come from countries where this type of violence-whether from U.S. drones, seemingly endless war, or groups like ISIS-has recently been a frequent reality? As one student said: "One of my teachers addressed the fact that Paris was under attack, but didn't mention anything about the rest of the world. It would have helped a lot if she addressed what was going on all around the world."

Students whose families are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, or other non-Western countries that have experienced terrorist attacks come to class and are part of a collective mourning for French people, knowing full well that similar attacks in their own countries have not received equivalent attention in their schools. It is almost impossible for these students not to draw the conclusion: The death of people who are racialized and/or look like me are virtually ignored-in the media and at school.

When I asked a cousin, 19-year-old Jasmine Bardouh, how she felt on the Monday after the terrorist attacks in Paris, she responded: "Honestly, I had a mixture of feelings running through me. I was sad, frustrated, and scared. Sad because of all the innocent people who died, scared because of all the blame Islam was going to get, and worried that people would target me because of the horrible crimes committed in the name of Islam. Most of all, I was frustrated because of all the uneducated people online cherry-picking quotes that sound violent from the Qur'an and posting them on social media. That caused even more fear and misconceptions about Islam, as if there wasn't enough confusion and hate already. I was also frustrated because the same week as the Paris attack, other countries, including Lebanon, also had fatal terrorist attacks, yet got almost no mainstream media coverage. This made me feel as though the blood of some people is considered more valuable then others, even though we are all human beings. Feeling as though you are less because of your religion and race is a horrible feeling."

On the Monday after the Paris attacks, classrooms across the country were lit up with discussions about what had transpired in Paris. These are valuable discussions, but they must be facilitated carefully if we are to ensure that all students, regardless of their faith or ancestral origin, feel safe in our classrooms. As Jasmine's 16-year-old sister Amel said: "The week after the attack, there were posters all over school saying 'Pray for Paris' but I didn't see one poster that had anything written about Lebanon or Burma or Syria."

According to Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor interviewed by the New Yorker: "When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag. . . . When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world."

This asymmetry of care and concerns is but one of the many faces of Islamophobia.

"I'm Afraid to Leave the House in My Hijab."

This article is dedicated to my mother. She is a remarkable French and resource room teacher. She is also a tireless advocate for social justice in her community. Her efforts include running a refugee welcoming committee and founding a group that works to build interfaith awareness.

The day after the Paris attacks, my mom and I were going to go to the mall. As I was getting ready to go, I could sense that she wasn't in the mood. Thinking she was worried about our family in Lebanon and the rising threat of ISIS, I asked her what was bothering her.

What she said was so disturbing and shocking: "I am afraid to leave the house in my hijab."

The person I look up to most didn't want to leave the house because she felt people would associate her with the terrorist attacks in Paris? I couldn't believe it. I haven't been able to stop thinking about my mother's words, and the paradox of her being associated with ISIS, the very group that had put her own family in danger only a few days earlier.

This is a direct effect of Islamophobia: the drastic, ignorant misinformation that links people like my mother with those who carried out the attacks. An oversimplification that leaves someone like my mother, who faces the same fears as the Parisians, uncomforted by and even excluded from the solidarity of public mourning that is the privilege of nonracialized groups.

If a woman as strong and politically centered as my mother can feel shame after a terror attack, many of our students and their families are likely to feel the same way. When I asked 19-year-old Hania how she felt after the attacks, she said: "I felt like I had to go on a mission to prove that I was against these attacks: 'Yes, I'm against people getting killed.' I felt like I had to prove that I'm a decent human being."

Islamophobia spikes after terror attacks are carried out in the name of Islam. According to an article by Andy Campbell for the Huffington Post in December 2015, hate crimes against Muslims in the United States have tripled since the attacks in Paris. Canada is no exception. For example, in the days following the Parisian attacks, a Muslim woman was attacked by two men as she picked up her children from a Toronto school. They pulled off her hijab, punched her, stole her phone, called her a "terrorist" and told her to "go back to your own country." This is not an isolated instance; walking down the street has become an even more charged activity for Muslims.

It seems absurd to associate the KKK with Christianity, but the same distinction is rarely made for Muslims. According to student Wajahat Ali in Mislabeled: The Impact of School Bullying and Discrimination on California Muslim Students, "Your existence is always interrogated, investigated, and questioned."

What Can Teachers Do?

As educators, we know that our words carry a powerful weight. Although we can't control how the media portrays Muslim people, we can encourage our students to think critically about the messages that they receive from the media. We must also protect our students from classroom debates where they are singled out and feel like they have to defend their faith. As 12-year-old Farah told the Guardian, "Before the attacks I was mostly treated like everyone else. But now I'm having to answer questions about my religion and the actions of people I don't even know. It's a lot of pressure. I mean, I'm only 12." Acknowledging one terror attack while ignoring others, debating whether or not Islam is inherently a violent religion, or asking Muslim students to defend their faith can result in Muslim students and their families feeling even more alienated in a society that already stigmatizes them.

One way to mitigate the impact of Islamophobia is to teach our students about it. We need to expose and critique the myths being constructed about Islam all around them in the media, in public discourse, and even in their classrooms.

For example, I teach at an alternative program in Vancouver for young parents from ages 13 to 19. Many of my students are raising their children independently while going to school. They know all too well the need to think critically and challenge stereotypes.

In the week after the Paris attacks, I asked my students if they had been following the news and encouraged them to discuss what had transpired over the weekend and how it was portrayed in the media. After expressing sorrow and outrage about the attack, they made the connection between stereotypes they face as young mothers and stereotypes that Muslims face. Earlier in the year, we had watched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Single Stories" TED Talk. They recalled Adichie's talk, and noted that the media coverage of the Paris attacks reinforced the "single stories" we hear about Muslims.

I often tell stories about my father so that I can humanize and debunk myths about Muslim men. For example, during a unit on healthy relationships, I told my students how he worked to put my mother through school so that she would never have to be dependent on him.

Moving past my own classroom, I'm in the anti-racist action group of my union, the British Columbia Teacher's Federation (BCTF). We are a social justice union, so after the Paris attacks, I emailed our social justice director and asked if I could work on some lesson plans to help teachers broach the subject of Islamophobia in their classrooms. The union supported me to create a primary and intermediate lesson plan as well as a resource list for teachers (see Other Resources).

As my wise friend and fellow teacher Ryan Cho recently reminded me: "It is hard to recognize your historical moment when you are in it." As anti-Muslim sentiments continue to deepen, particularly after recent terror attacks and the rise of Donald Trump's anti-Muslim campaign, we must use our position as educators to ensure that our students have a critical eye and are able to separate the violent actions of ISIS from the lives of the one billion Muslims who exist across the world.

We cannot leave our students in a situation in which they have to defend themselves in the face of racism and religious discrimination. We can, and must, draw the ties between Islamophobia and other forms of intolerance. This is a crucial moment in history: We can choose to be true allies and fulfill our commitments to make our school communities nurturing spaces for all students, teachers, parents, and staff. The need for self-reflection has never been greater. ◼

References

Chin, Jessica. Nov. 17, 2015. "Muslim Woman Attacked While Picking Up Kids from Toronto School." Huffington Post Canada. huffingtonpost.ca.

Council on American-Islamic Relations. 2015. Mislabeled: The Impact of School Bullying and Discrimination on California Muslim Students. Download PDF.

Irshad, Gazala. Dec. 21, 2015. "How Anti-Muslim Sentiment Plays Out in Classrooms Across the U.S." The Guardian. theguardian.com.

Other Resources

Elbardouh, Nassim. 2015. Islamophobia Lesson, Part I. Download PDF.

Elbardouh, Nassim. 2015. Islamophobia Lesson, Part II. Download PDF.
These lessons for high school students were created for the British Columbia Teachers' Federation. They incorporate a number of the resources listed here:

Adichie, Chimamanda. 2009. "The Danger of a Single Story." TEDGlobal. ted.com.
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie describes how she found her authentic cultural voice-and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Dazed. 2015. Do You Know Who I Am? How It Feels to Be a Young British Muslim in 2015. Video directed by Camilla Mathis. youtube.com.

The Narcicyst with Shadia Mansour. 2015. "Hamdulillah." Music video. youtube.com.
This video is a global collaborative effort by 10 photographers-from London to Lebanon, Cairo to Canada, Abu Dhabi to the United States-to represent the diversity of Muslims worldwide. Images include DJs, MCs, poets, architects, teachers, doctors, parents, and children.

Rao, Sameer. Oct. 20, 2015. "#DoIMatterNow Campaign Promotes Indigenous-Muslim Solidarity in Canada." ColorLines. colorlines.com.
The #DoIMatterNow campaign was started by Inuit women in Canada who donned makeshift niqabs and took pictures decrying the systematic disenfranchisement of Native people while expressing solidarity with Muslim women.

Bazian, Hatem, and and Maxwell Leung, eds. Fall 2015. Islamophobia Studies Journal. Download PDF
This journal is a helpful resource for educators seeking more background information.

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From Rethinking Schools: As a Teacher and a Daughter: The Impact of Islamophobia

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Like many, I watched in shock as the terror attacks unfolded in Paris last November. ISIS, the same group that had killed 43 innocent people in a double suicide bombing in Lebanon the day before, was now attacking Parisians.

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Explanation of what it means to be an anti-muslim hate group

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All anti-Muslim hate groups exhibit extreme hostility toward Muslims. The organizations portray those who worship Islam as fundamentally alien and attribute to its followers an inherent set of negative traits. Muslims are depicted as irrational, intolerant and violent, and their faith is frequently depicted as sanctioning pedophilia, coupled with intolerance for homosexuals and women.

These groups also typically hold conspiratorial views regarding the inherent danger to America posed by its Muslim-American community. Muslims are viewed as a fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy and Western civilization with Islamic despotism, a conspiracy theory known as "civilization jihad." Anti-Muslim hate groups allege that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law. The threat of the Muslim Brotherhood is also cited, with anti-Muslim groups constantly attacking Muslim civil rights groups and American Muslim leaders for their supposed connections to the Brotherhood. Many of these groups have pushed for the Brotherhood to be designated a foreign terrorist organization.

Anti-Muslim hate groups also broadly defame Islam, which they tend to treat as a monolithic and evil religion. These groups generally hold that Islam has no values in common with other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology rather than a religion.

In recent years, the most influential groups - namely ACT for America and the think tank Center for Security Policy (CSP) - have sought to develop closer relationships with elected officials both at the state and local level. A shift in targets has also taken place recently with the Syrian refugee crisis, as anti-Muslim groups have increasingly directed their ire toward the American refugee program. Refugees are commonly depicted as potential terrorist infiltrators by these organizations. Small anti-refugee groups have popped up across the country and fought the relocation of refugees at the hyper-local level.

2017 anti-Muslim hate groups
View all groups by state and by ideology.
American Freedom Alliance* (Los Angeles, California)

American Freedom Defense Initiative* (New York, New York)

American Freedom Law Center* (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

American Public Policy Alliance (Washington, District of Columbia)

American Security Rally of Montana* (Statewide, Montana)

Americans for America (Englewood, Colorado)

Bomb Islam (Phoenix, Arizona)

Bureau on American Islamic Relations* (Irving, Texas)

Christian Action Network* (Forest, Virginia)

Christians and Jews United for Israel (Hillsborough, New Hampshire)

Citizens for National Security* (Boca Raton, Florida)

Citizens for the St. Croix Valley (Hudson, Wisconsin)

Citizens' Action Group of South Florida* (Hollywood, Florida)

Clarion Project* (Washington, District of Columbia)

Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center (Buhl, Idaho)

Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley (Cupertino, California)

Counter Jihad Coalition* (Santa Monica, California)

Counter Terrorism Cell (Las Vegas, Nevada)

Cultures In Context Incorporated/Turning Point Project (Immokalee, Florida)

Cumberland Conservatives (Statewide, North Carolina)

David Horowitz Freedom Center (Los Angeles, California)

Faith Leaders for America (Washington, District of Columbia)

Florida Family Association* (Tampa, Florida)

Fortress of Faith (Bellingham, Washington)

Foundation for Advocating Christian Truth (Bronx, New York)

G416 Patriots (Boerne, Texas)

Global Faith Institute (Omaha, Nebraska)

Jihad Watch* (Sherman Oaks, California)

Keep South Dakota Safe PAC (Aberdeen, South Dakota)

Lincoln County Citizen Action Network * (Fayetteville, Tennessee)

North Carolina Pastors Network (Morganton, North Carolina)

Pig Blood Bullets (Priest River, Idaho)

Political Islam* (Nashville, Tennessee)

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (Franklin, Tennessee)

Radio Jihad/Global Patriot Radio* (Statewide, New York)

Refugee Resettlement Watch* (Fairplay, Maryland)

Religious Freedom Coalition* (Washington, District of Columbia)

Secure Michigan (New Baltimore, Michigan)

Security Studies Group (Washington, District of Columbia)

Silver Bullet Gun Oil* (Courtland, Virginia)

Soldiers of Odin (Denver, Colorado)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, Illinois)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, Ohio)

Soldiers of Odin (Beaumont, Texas)

Soldiers of Odin (East Texas, Texas)

Soldiers of Odin (Flagstaff, Arizona)

Soldiers of Odin (Houston, Texas)

Soldiers of Odin (Los Angeles/Ventura County, California)

Soldiers of Odin (River Region, Texas)

Soldiers of Odin (San Antonio, Texas)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, Indiana)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, North Carolina)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, Tennessee)

Soldiers of Odin (Statewide, Texas)

Southeast Michigan Tea Party (Utica, Michigan)

Sunshine on Government (SONG) Alliance* (Statewide, Georgia)

Tennessee Eagle Forum (Nashville, Tennessee)

The Shoebat Foundation* (Newtown, Pennsylvania)

The Straight Way and More (Venice, Florida)

The United West* (Lake Worth, Florida)

Truth in Love Project* (Chattaroy, Washington)

Truth in Textbooks (Boerne, Texas)

Unconstrained Analytics (Washington, District of Columbia)

Understanding the Threat* (Dallas, Texas)

Virginia Christian Alliance (Statewide, Maryland)

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Anti-Muslim hate groups are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, with many appearing in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Beginning in 2010, anti-Muslim legislation increased and opposition to the development of an Islamic Center in lower Manhattan made headlines.

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Article on the peaceful majority of Muslims

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Before Orlando, more Americans had been killed since the Sept. 11 attacks by white-nationalist terrorists in the United States than by Muslims, according to research by New America, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

Robert McKenzie, an expert on relations between the United States and the Muslim world at the Brookings Institution, says the United States has resettled about 800,000 refugees over the past 15 years; five have been arrested on terrorism charges.

Critics assert that Muslims don't assimilate, but researchers paint a different picture. Surveys by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the Pew Research Center suggest that the attitudes of United States Muslims about country and community are similar to those of adherents of other religions. They watch sports on television and play video games at the same rate as other Americans.

Mr. McKenzie complains that the news media rarely captures the civil engagement of Muslims. When the water supply in Flint, Mich., was found to be toxic, the state's Muslims worked with members of other religions to aid distressed citizens while state and local officials failed. "They were very helpful," says Lee Anne Walters, a Flint resident who blew the whistle on the contamination. "It was great seeing everyone come together."

There are controversies. A handful of communities with large Muslim populations have promoted the use of Shariah law, a fundamentalist doctrine that would offend most Americans, including many Muslims. A few radical imams and vulnerable young men and women are susceptible to propaganda from the Islamic State. The militant group has demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of social media, putting out more than 90,000 messages daily in multiple languages.

Mr. Clarke says the United States needs to institute a "much more thorough program" to counter that propaganda. He also says that preventing terrorism suspects from having easy access to lethal weapons should be a no-brainer. But he warns that there are no panaceas. "When a guy one minute suggests he may be sympathetic to ISIS and the next minute decides to kill people, catching that minute is really, really hard," he says.

In the longer term, experts say Islamic radicalism needs to be addressed at its source overseas. No one, other than a few vote-seeking politicians, argues that can be done easily or quickly. There will be more terrorist strikes in the United States and elsewhere.

So it's worth remembering that the vast majority of American Muslims go to school, work hard, pay their taxes, participate in their communities and serve in the military. That's why they resent being told they are on the front lines in the fight against radical terrorists, Mr. McKenzie says. "They don't know who those people are."

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A Peaceful Muslim Majority in the U.S. Tarred by Acts of a Few

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Before Orlando, more Americans had been killed since the Sept. 11 attacks by white-nationalist terrorists in the United States than by Muslims, according to research by New America, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

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Video on facts and myths about American Muslims

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Video on how to teach kids that it is okay to be different in order to fight against Islamophobia

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Teaching ‘different is okay’ to combat Islamophobia in U.S. schools

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Article on what it is like to be a Muslim student in America right now

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"Are you part of the 9/11 or are you ISIS?" "Did you ever kill anyone?" "Are you going to bomb this place?" These are some typical questions that 12-year-old Abdu Rrahman Mohamed says he's been asked by his non-Muslim classmates week after week in his Long Beach, California, school, he told youth radio VoiceWaves.org last week.

Earlier this year, a high school teacher in Richmond, Texas, sent all his students home with a new study guide he had created, with the title, "Islam/Radical Islam (Did You Know)." In the study guide, which had not been approved by the school, the economics teacher presented fictional statements as if they were facts, including, "38% of Muslims believe people that leave the faith should be executed." The teacher also wrote up instructions for what to do "if taken hostage by radical Islamists."

In Weston, Florida, a high school French teacher allegedly called one 14-year-old Muslim student a "rag-head Taliban" in February. The student's father, Youssef Wardani, a software engineer and an immigrant from Lebanon, said his son, an honor roll student, now hates going to school.

These are not isolated incidents. The federal government, leaders of Muslim organizations, many Muslim students, and parents report an increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric and abuses in classrooms.

Last week, during an event hosted by the nonprofit organization Muslim Advocates, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch expressed concerns about what she sees as an uptick in anti-Muslim incidents in schools. The Department of Justice has partnered with the Department of Education to advise schools on anti-bullying measures. Lynch added that the DOJ is investigating MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas; the school in September called the police and suspended 14-year-old Ahmed Muhammad when he brought a clock he had made to school, to show it to his engineering teacher. School administrators assumed it was a bomb.

Recent figures from a 2014 California survey of students by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA) show that 52 percent of Muslim students in California reported being the target of verbal abuse and insults. That's twice as many students as those who report being bullied based on gender and race nationally. The survey also found that 29 percent of students who wear a hijab reported offensive touching or pulling of their headscarves. One student said, "They would call me a terrorist and 'towel head' and throw rocks at me." Another student reported, "Someone threatened to kill me if I went to school on 9/11."

Research shows that students who are bullied do worse academically, and abuse can reappear later in life; former victims have reported struggles with depression and anxiety, as well as risks of suicide.

Perhaps most concerning in the figures and news reports is the number of anti-Muslim incidents that have originated from teachers and administrators, as was the case with Ahmed in Irving. One in five Muslim students in California said they experienced discrimination by a teacher or an administrator. Of these, only 42 percent said reporting a problem to an adult made a difference.

This poses a challenge for advocates and parents who are working to combat Islamophobia in schools. While students, especially in high schools, play a large role in combating any form of meanness and abuse at their schools, adults play a greater role in setting the tone of their classrooms and enforcing positive social norms.

The rise in bullying of Muslim students is a reflection of the rising Islamophobia in the United States since 9/11. As Mother Jones' Edwin Rios reported last week, "The most recent FBI data indicates that hate crimes based on race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation have dropped across the board-with the exception of crimes against Muslim Americans. In 2014, even as the total number of hate crimes dipped nearly 8 percent from the year before, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 14 percent." And on Sunday, the New York Times' Laurie Goodstein found that in the aftermath of attacks in Paris and the mass shooting in San Bernandino, California, "Muslims and leaders of mosques across the United States say they are experiencing a wave of death threats, assaults and vandalism unlike anything they have experienced since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001."

(Are you a Muslim student who doesn't feel safe in your school, or is your school a good model that others should learn from? I'd love to hear from you. Email me at krizga [at] motherjones.com.)

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This is what it's like to be a Muslim schoolkid in America right now

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"Are you part of the 9/11 or are you ISIS?" "Did you ever kill anyone?" "Are you going to bomb this place?" These are some typical questions that 12-year-old Abdu Rrahman Mohamed says he's been asked by his non-Muslim classmates week after week in his Long Beach, California, school, he told youth radio VoiceWaves.org last week.