Posted on 01/21/2016 1:17:23 PM PST by presidio9
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.
Miriam Horrocks, seated, with 6-year-old son Michael, is presented with the U.S. flag by a U.S. Marine Corps honor guard following a funeral Mass on Sept. 17 in Media, Pa., for her late husband. Michael Horrocks, 38, was killed when hijacked United Airlines Flight 175, which he was co-piloting, crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
The first thing these clowns need to do is give their kids American names.
The Talk- You know kids, these crazy Kafirs object to our traditions such as mass Rape and Mass murder. Who knew Kafirs could be so narrow?
Yep, all I need to know about Islam I learned on 911.
Ellen Saracini (center) and her two daughters Brielle (left) and Kirsten (right), attend a funeral mass for her husband, Victor Saracini, the pilot of United Flight 175, which was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
There are, literally, thousands more photos just like this.
"My mind kept thinking back to Ahmed Mohamed, the clock kid..." I will tell you what the hell is wrong with these people -here in this country, that is: If you keep telling anyone he or she is a victim, what choice do they have but to believe it.
I tell my kids F—k Islam, F—k Muslims, F—k all Liberals, F—k PC, F—k Obama he’s a POS as is everyone associated with him, guns are good, LGBT is a 4 letter word and any “phobia” associated with it is PC BS so see F—k PC, being a conservative is good, be proud of being white and your white privilege which is nothing more than working for what you get and taking responsibility about what you do.
My kids are 31 & 38 and they just continue to say.. we get it Dad!
I lovingly disagree. We want Mohammed to be the one that keeps bombing, killing, etc. Once they become Joe, Dan, and Mark, it becomes more difficult to show the Islam connection.
No, the teacher was being a human being.
The teacher mentions 'terrorism' in her classroom, and I'm sure the little voice in her head is shouting at her 'must not look at the person dressed like a terrorist' - but you can't help it. I'm also sure it was more of a glance, than a stare, and the hypersensitive member of the terrorism clan gets her feathers ruffled.
As long as you pledge allegiance to a Satanic cult that has 'terrorism' as the only instrument in their tool-kit of interacting with anyone -- sure, at a minimum expect some stares.
In a sane society it would be, expect to be deported.
And the “TALK” German men are giving their daughters?
Islamophobia is a fiction. Christophobia is real.
” “phobia” associated with it is PC BS “
Technically “phobia” means “fear of”. We aren’t “afraid of” gays, muslims, etc., we just want the liberty to live and function with persons of our own culture and beliefs!
"I told my daughter, "High school and college, these are preparing you for the real world..."
Oh really!
Double-whammy!
“Why are guns legal?”
“Why the intolerance?”
Seems like the pincer movement of banning guns and banning “intolerance” all wrapped up in one.
I’m soooo sure her kids are asking her why are guns legal.
If you know even a little about muslims, you know they are the bullies, not the bullied. Their behavior all over the world speaks for itself. I’m so sick of them always trying to make themselves the victims.
This liberal propaganda is nauseating.
If they loved their children they would abandon the vile Islamic ideology and tell them the truth about the nature of Islam.
John Quincy Adams on Islam
In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).
Yeah. The real fear that Muslims want to kill all non-Muslims and the uncertainty that one who was let into the US is going to open fire on you in a mall one day.
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