Muslim girl details students' taunts, attack

[JohnLocke]

Muslim girl details student taunts, attack
By Lona O'Connor -- The Palm Beach Post
Saturday, April 17, 2004
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DAVIE (FL) -- A 12-year-old Pakistani girl faced the news media on Friday for the first time, recounting an attack that has been described as a hate crime against her.
(...)
During the news conference, she wore a black hijab, a scarf that Muslim women and girls wear to cover their hair in public. She described how a group of boys approached her on April 5 after school as she was about to head home from Congress Middle School. They pulled the hijab off her hair, then struck her with a belt buckle in the lip. She said they told her not to tell anyone, then ran away.
Since transferring to Congress Middle in March, she said, she has been the target of a series of incidents that started with questions and staring, but soon escalated to insults and culminated in the belt attack.
Shortly after she began attending Congress, students crowded around her and on more than one occasion asked why she wore the hijab and where she came from, she said. When she told them she was from Pakistan, they said, "Osama country." The reference was to Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, who was born in Saudi Arabia.
(...)
The girl, whose family refused to give her name for her safety, was accompanied to the news conference by her mother and an uncle, Shabbir Khoja. The uncle said she called him, crying, on the day of the belt incident. Khoja said the family informed Congress Middle officials the next day.
(...)
Asked whether the incidents have affected her feelings about the United States, she answered, "This is a good country, but not for me."
----
Read the rest of "Little Freepers in Action" here.

[HFishbine]

1. Where the hell were the adults? (nt)

[Warpy]

6. School adults are scared of bully boys, too

I can think of no other reason bullying has been winked at in the schools for so long.

[Bandit]

9. In the whitehouse ~ didn't you know?

This is what happens when the GOP "adults" are in charge

[boobooday]

2. "This is a good country, but not for me"

How sad.



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[Mari333]

3. The children who attack, are representative of this administration

who are adolescents. In fact this whole country is full of adolescents, large angry children in adult bodies. Thats also who runs the country. The children see the govt behaving like angry adolescents who are immature, and they behave in the same way.
Add to that the lack of education, lack of history, lack of social skills, and lack of understanding about what country is where.
Thats our educational system=shit.
Bush admin feeds on this kind of ignorance, because they also have it.

[kalian]

4. Hmmm...where's the outrage? When Nazis did this to jews....

everybody got all prickly. Hmmm...I guess since the muslims are
"brown skinned", like dubya stated in his "press conference", they
deserve to be treated differently. :mad:

[AlienGirl]

17. "When Nazis did this to jews"

...the US and UK stopped accepting Jewish immigrants, and rich men like Henry Ford and Prescott Bush propped up the Nazis with big investments.

Of course, at the time Jewish people were not considered "white."

It's all, tragically, business as usual--SOP for the human race.

Tucker

[AspenRose]

5. Unacceptable.

When I was in high school in the 80s, a young Muslim girl from Iran was enrolled at my school. Apparently she had older siblings living here in the US, so she came to live with them. She was in my geometry class and ended up leaving because students were always harrassing, pushing, hitting, and spitting on her. I was the only one in school who treated her like the human being she was, and consequently I was the only one she'd speak to in school. She gave me envelopes she addressed herself so I'd be sure to write to her when she returned to Iran.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

[Just Me]

7. I am so sick of bullies, both young and old!!!

This is just plain crap!!!

Where is the tolerance? Where is the acceptance? Where is the justice?

The freon neocons are just older versions of these adolescent bullies,...choosing/creating people to demonize and destroy.

[Trillo]

8. This girl should be "safe" in school . . .

. . . and also on the way home.

I also wonder about the determined focus of the bullies, the hijab. Many of us were bullied in schools for many different things. There is always a reason: too fat, too ugly, too unpopular, too smart, too stupid, hair too short, hair too long, wearing wrong colors, skin wrong color, etc.

Perhaps the focus in this case is in reality just "another excuse" to be mean. If she hadn't been there, there would have been some other unlucky soul to bear the bullies anger.

Welcome to the America I was raised in.

[FormerOstrich]

15. SimpleTrend I was glad to see your post...

this article wasn't setting particularly well with me. We had just moved to a different state when I was around nine or ten. We hadn't lived very long when two boys, about my age, started harassing me as I walked to my piano lessons. They were harassing me because my family and I were not part of the prevalent religion. They literally attempted to push/throw me in the canal.

Now, here is the problem. What in the hell was the journalist doing by asking her how she felt about the country? While I am sure the experience was difficult for her, and the perpetrators deserve to be called to task, but the true injustice seems to be in the way it is reported. I didn't consider the state, school, or actually the religion itself responsible for my attack. It was the damn stupid kids (I think even then I realized they most likely had equally stupid parents).

Had the spotlight been on me and then grilled on how I felt about the state, I think I would have then felt isolated and outsider.

Granted, I don't know how long the girl has lived here. However, as she no longer feels this is not the place for her does she have a full understanding of how girls/women live in Pakistan. Perhaps being subjected to an inexcusable act of behavior, I believe it might pale in comparison to some things she might be subjected to in her native country. The point is she shouldn't have to think in those terms because no one should have placed her in isolation.

I'm not sure I am making sense, but there is something to this that is as SimpleTrend says. At a minimum the coverage was "icing on the cake".

[Trillo]

18. State, School, and Religion

Well, going just from the girl's quote, it's understandable that right now she's not happy with the incident. But is she unhappy with the state? Her quote could be interpreted to mean several things. Certainly she's hurt, and needs to heal. We all do, to some degree or another: life isn't all a "piece of cake." It reads as if her relatives care a lot about her, so she's one-up on some.

FormerOstrich, I couldn't help but get the feeling that part of what you were referring to was the quote I have in my signature line, because you mentioned state, school, and religion. It's interesting how Durant himself uses the quote, it doesn't necessarily have a negative connotation, but I suppose that the most powerful quotes can probably be identified by the reader in multiple ways. Perhaps the same is true with the Pakistani girl's quote.

There is a problem in schools when this kind of abuse can occur. There is also no such thing as perfect security, families, schools, governments, laws, or religions. We can only strive to be better and fix what is broken. This is where the relativistic argument of whether here is better than where she is from breaks down for me. That this girl appears to have been religiously discriminated against suggests that teachers have a bit more work to do with the kids who don't seem to understand what "freedom from governmental interference in religion" really means.

Here, a group of "boys" ganged up on a "girl" and physically harmed her. Without any religious overtones, this in itself is disturbing.

When a bunch of kids are put together at the behest of the state, there is a bit of responsibility for their care created by those who do the compelling. That some of the kids who attend compelled schools are religiously intolerant should come as no surprise to anyone. When the care some kids receive doesn't measure up to constitutional standards, it doesn't reflect well on those educators' responsibility. This leads directly to questions about the real motivation of those who enable.

You mention a little umbrage at the reporter for their skew to the story. Everyone has a skew. Another reporter is free to investigate and report what they perceive about this girl, assuming of course, that reporter has a publisher willing to print.

How to create true responsibility and honorable care for kids in school is always a good question to explore. Perhaps the real truth, and truthful process, is in the oscillation between extremes and how that causes us to change our actions.

[Just Me]

20. Beautifully written post,...

,...we all have a great deal more to do,...as human beings,...to create a better world!!!

:bounce:

Thank you,...that was beautiful and brought both warmth and understanding to the fore.

[JohnLocke]

10. Kick (nt).

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I've thought some more about bullying since

posting on the thread about the middle school boy who was called "fag" because he was a dancer.

As I said on that other thread, the bullying that I witnessed as a child and teen was NOT carried out by the kids with low self-esteem, but by the kids who felt a sense of entitlement, like the jocks or the girls who lived in the trophy mansions by the lake.

I was a target of the rich girls' emotional abuse--their way of telling me that I didn't measure up. The girls from poor families were always either friendly or neutral.

My youngest brother got it from the jocks, because he played the piano and didn't try out for the football team, even though he is strong and squarely built. Even the adults hassled him about not going out for sports.

In my suburban high school, bullying seems to have been a tacitly approved means of getting non-conforming young people to conform, with the jocks or the rich girls used as enforcers. The non-conformity can be anything: poverty, ethnicity, clothing, intelligence, sexual orientation, whatever.

If you've seen the 1940s film How Green Was My Valley, you may remember the sequence in which the Welsh boy Huw is sent to a predominantly English school and is not only beaten up by the other kids but is blamed by the teachers for starting fights. Here, too, the teachers condone tormenting a student that they really don't want to have in their school.

I'm wondering whether bullying is a relic of our animal past, similar to the way animals that live in groups tend to have "alpha" animals and others of lower status. Don't alpha animals constantly prove their supremacy by demanding submission from the lower-ranking animals, and isn't the only way for a low-ranking animal to move up to defeat a higher-ranking animal?

That would tie in with the commonly observed phenomenon of getting bullies to quit by fighting back.

[Lisa]

16. re: bullying by adults

As you say, Lydia -- bullying has many faces. Sometimes it's done by dumb, frustrated people who are themselves rejected -- and sometimes it's the popular ones who are responsible. The latter often use emotional/verbal abuse instead of physical attacks, and so it can remain undetected. Even young kids can be shockingly good at this kind of manipulation (e.g. masking it by pretending to be nice when someone is watching). I remember that in the 70s and 80s, the sociologists and educational experts used to be down on the "heads" and "druggies" as troublemakers (my dad was a truant officer and brought home a lot of books from work!) The "rich girls" weren't even on the radar back then -- ignored by the mostly-male researchers? (There was a rather good NY Times magazine interview with Janet Reno a while back, where she described the ordeal of "cotillion", where the pretty rich girls had the school's blessing to pick on everyone else, and of course they zeroed in on "the tall girl".)

There's generally an underlying pattern to look for. One of my high school classmates -- "Joe", a good-looking, intelligent guy who was moderately athletic but not a "jock" -- was picked on not only by the students, but by their parents. He came out of the closet in his twenties -- though in high school he had kept a VERY low profile. But that still wasn't enough to protect him. One student had hosted a Christmas party and his folks (and some of the other parents) were there as chaperones. Joe hadn't arrived yet since he had a late shift at work, and some of the grownups (who in retrospect had probably been drinking on the sly) began to make derogatory comments about him. They didn't seem to care that the kids could hear them. Our class president tried to speak up for Joe, but folded when they laughed at her. I don't blame her -- most 17-year-olds would be intimidated by scornful grownups who have two cars and six-figure incomes. I'll never forget the tone of voice they used on her -- years later, when I saw the Jodie Foster movie "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane", I almost jumped out of my seat. (I don't think she's forgotten either -- I talked with her a few years ago, and she's now an outspoken community activist living in Toronto.)

By the time Joe showed up, several of the students felt so uncomfortable that we cut out early -- we didn't even wait to see whether the parents would put on fake smiles and be nice to him. Tracey, Ross, and I persuaded Joe to come with us. We went back to my place, and my mom made us hot apple cider. I told Mom what happened at the party, after the others had left, and she looked at me sadly and said, "Where do you think the kids at school get it from?"

p.s. all the kids who left early that night had some experience with being ostracized -- black, Asian, Jewish, low-income -- and I really hope that Muslim girl finds friends like the ones I had, because it showed me that there are things worth working for in this society.

[Just Me]

21. How refreshing to actually witness an examination of the "roots",...

,...of such problems being discussed. The only issue missing is the fact that, rather than a culture which embraces self-competition or self-improvement,...ours has become a culture which heavily rewards competition against others. We are not a "win-win" culture,...we are a "win-lose" culture. We do not embrace "losers". We do not treat everyone as "equal". We are either "winners" or "losers" and the "losers" are at fault and something less than the "winners".

What is really weird about all that is,...there are so few "winners" and so many "losers" which condemns the majority to a form of humility. That humility breeds discontent.

We have a LOT of work to do,...to make this country and this world better.

[ultramega]

22. Hey, anyone watching that show "High School Reunion?

It's a reality show, and they have a bunch of people from one class (93?) and they also invited some girls who were bullied by some of the women there, who were all cheerleaders. One woman, I think her name was Michelle, finally confronted the other woman Denise who bullied her in high school on a daily basis. It was really touching, because apparently this was pretty severe bullying; this woman Denise came up behind Michelle at a dance and jerked her hair so hard that Michelle fell to the ground in front of everyone at the dance, and also Denise told Michelle that she had a cousin who would kill her if she told him to. It was odd, because when the confrontation took place, Michelle, who is now a 28 year old woman, looked like a little kid, she looked so scared and vulnerable, like that part of herself that was brutalized had not been able to grow like the rest of her, she almost transformed into a scared awkard teenager right in front of the camera.

And of course the woman Denise showed no remorse. She apologized, but brushed it off with "it was ten years ago, it doesnt' matter", but you could tell it was just talk and she had no real guilt about it. It so affected me I could barely sleep that night, and then when I did I dreamed about it. It seems like childhood is a whole other nation that we forget we've ever been to once we are grown, but the pain and memories are just as real as adult ones are, we just repress them.

[Guaranteed]

12. Fuck these kids, fuck the MEDIA, fuck their parents.

Fuck this goddamned country. What the FUCK happened to FREEDOM???

[dawn]

13. This is so sad and disgusting.

It makes me embarrassed to say that I am from the same country as the people who commit these atrocities.

I wish I could tell her that I feel as alienated as she does in this country when I hear about stuff like this.

[Judi Lynn]

14. I hope she learns she has friends in the country, and that we're not all

right-wing racists.

Hope she'll be able to become stronger in time than those who bullied her.

[ultramega]

19. Tragic. Devalued by both her religion and her school.

Oppressed both at home and away from home. It is so sad that muslim women are obvious targets because of their dress, this is ignorant as hell because they have so little freedom and are basically painted with the stigma of sex from the day they are born, hence the hypermodesty, yet the vast majority of terrorist acts by islamic fundies are committed by men.

It makes me so sad that these kids can't be told to be grateful for the freedoms that they have and that they should be-friend this girl and educate her about her rights as a U.S. citizen so that she doesn't have to live a life of gender based religious oppression. Talk about a missed opportunity.