Finding strength

By Manya Brachear Pashman

Tribune News Service

GLENVIEW, Ill.

Aasiyah Bhaiji knew the boys in her class were just clowning around, but their words stung just the same. As they headed inside from an ultimate Frisbee game at Springman Middle School in Glenview, Ill., one of them wrapped his team’s colors around his head like a turban.

“Are you trying to go Muslim style, terrorist style?” his buddy asked. Aasiyah’s stomach burned. “Stop it,” she snapped.

“You can’t tell me he doesn’t look like Osama bin Laden,” the kid shot back, Aasiyah later would recall. She explained to a friend later why she took offense, even though the boys hadn’t directly insulted her.

“My religion is me,” Aasiyah said.

Aasiyah, 13, and her peers weren’t alive for the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Her 16-year-old sister, Saarah, was an infant at the time. But both Glenview teenagers have grown up beneath a cloud of suspicion about their faith. Classmates come to school repeating what they’ve heard at home or amplify tropes on social media that liken all Muslims to murderers.

Barack Obama lamented the pain that divisive language on the presidential campaign trail has caused for America’s youth. Though religious literacy, cultural awareness and sensitivity have evolved since 2001, political rhetoric and the rise of Islamic State have sparked a new wave of Islamophobia that plays out either in the form of bullying or passive-aggressive comments directed at no one in particular but overheard by those they hurt.

“People don’t realize you’re Muslim, so they think they can make all kinds of remarks without people judging them,” said Aasiyah, who doesn’t wear a head scarf.

As a result, some teachers, counselors and school administrators have stepped up to stop bullying before it starts.

Shortly after the Paris terrorist attacks Nov. 13 that killed 130 people, Saarah Bhaiji’s French teacher at Glenbrook South High School broke out in English, usually forbidden inside his classroom. He didn’t want anyone to miss what he had to say on Saarah’s behalf.

“’How could you think what’s going on in Paris and what’s going on with ISIS is representative of Islam if you have people like Saarah?’” she recalls the teacher, Matt Bertke saying, using a popular acronym for Islamic State. “I didn’t have to get up to say it. He did it. I got lucky.”

Bertke said he simply could not stay silent. He felt obligated to set an example amid the political invective churning in the 24-hour news cycle and the careless remarks that go viral on Facebook and Twitter.

“Respect – that’s the most valuable lesson we could possibly teach,” Bertke said in an interview. “On all of these social media, it’s so easy to see the hatred out there in the world.”

For Mohsin Waraich, 18, a Muslim and a senior at New Trier High School, one of his worst confrontations unfolded on Facebook. When a player on his former park district basketball team posted anti-Muslim messages, Waraich wrote a friendly private message to the boy to correct his misunderstanding of the faith. The former teammate ignored it, and his anti-Muslim posts continued, including that Muslims get offended by cartoons and not beheadings.

“I laughed a little that people are this blinded and not educated about it,” Waraich said. “Some kids just want to hear what they’re thinking, and some actually want to know.”

Waraich isn’t afraid to face down people who unfairly tarnish his faith or misrepresent it. He also isn’t afraid to fast for Ramadan during football season or take a break from video games at a friend’s house to go pray. When New Trier hosted a diversity day for students on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, he did two presentations about Islam.

But for American Muslim teens, learning how to balance their multifaceted identity can be a challenge.

“For every child, identity is really important: ‘Who am I? Where do I fit in?’” said Aliyah Bannister, 28, a Muslim guidance counselor at the Islamic Foundation School. “But Muslim kids have to deal with that crisis of identity along with ‘What’s my ethnic identity? How does that fit in? How does being an American fit in? How does being a Muslim fit in?’ You have to resolve all these issues as a youth when you’re already feeling that all you want is to blend in.”

Najma Adam, a Muslim clinical social worker in Northfield, Ill., said the negative encounters, if not addressed, can have a detrimental effect. But they also can strengthen a child’s coping mechanisms.

As a mental-health professional, Adam said she encourages introspection. So while some young Muslims choose to distance themselves from their faith to avoid conflicts with classmates, she has seen the negative attention empower others to learn precisely what their faith teaches and embrace it.

“[In Islam] to know yourself is to know God,” she said. “It’s not just a mental-health pursuit or a worldly pursuit – it’s also a spiritual pursuit.

“This idea of Islamophobia is in some ways building the spiritual character of people,” she continued. “Now, for the first time, they’re saying ‘What does that mean?’ That’s a good struggle to have.”