Common Dreams:
In a 2025 survey of Muslims, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), found, “Forty-seven percent of Muslim families with school-aged children report having a child who faced religious-based bullying in the past year, compared with 23% among the general public.”
Like many Muslim children, I learned early what it felt like to be viewed as different, foreign, or less worthy. Those experiences leave scars that are difficult to explain to people who have never lived them.
Today, I see those same burdens carried by Muslim students.
I hear from young people who become anxious when classroom discussions turn to terrorism or September 11. Not because they do not want to learn history, but because they worry the conversation will somehow become about them.
They wonder whether classmates will look at them and make jokes.
They wonder whether they will be expected to condemn atrocities they had nothing to do with.
No child should have to carry that burden.
