Are Muslim Students in California Being Bullied?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of California has just released a study of Muslim students in California who claim to have been victims of bullying in school.

Based on interviews of 500 Muslim students, CAIR  produced statistical breakdowns as to how the students answered questions regarding bullying in school. You will note that the average answer to about 80% of the questions indicated positive experiences and less than 10% indicated negative experiences, while the remainder fell under "No answer" or "Undecided". Given the fact that bullying is unfortunately a fact of life during these school years and may happen for a variety of reasons, it may be asked just how widespread the problem here actually is.

Aside from the charts, the rest of the document is filled up with CAIR's own editorial comment, anecdotal stories, and recommendations.

In this  December 19 LA Times article by Times writer Kurt Streeter, it, indeed,  mentions that there is a disconnect in that approximately 80% of Muslim students responded positively on their school experience. The article than goes on in depth as to why CAIR believes the numbers may be overly positive. For example, many students may be afraid to report bullying to their parents or their reports won't be taken seriously by teachers.

Here is one letter to Mr Streeter by a friend who has given permission to post this. He has asked his last name not be used.

"Dear Mr. Streeter,

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read in your article that 80% of Muslim students responded positively to a survey on their overall educational experience.  Considering that many of these students are from immigrant families, that they often dress differently, and that they stick to their own close-knit community, the survey result seemed to me to be a rather encouraging sign.  My wife and I have lived overseas and also worked with immigrants here in America, so we know about discrimination and bullying first-hand.  A high score like 80% indicates that American youth are quite tolerant of differences.  We should be celebrating that sort of survey result.

Instead, you spent the rest of the article parroting the  reasons why CAIR believes the survey data might be overly optimistic:   Students don’t want to admit something is wrong, they don’t understand what bullying is, their complaints won’t be taken seriously by their teachers, their parents won’t support them, they don’t want their parents to worry.   Why is the Times bending over backwards to discredit a rather favorable response from the students?   It seems like that you and CAIR have been reporting about Muslim-American victimhood so long that you can’t handle the truth – things just aren’t that dire for Muslim-Americans.   A recent survey released by the FBI indicates that Jews are five times more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than Muslims.  The LA Times needs to start telling the truth about the general acceptance of Muslim-Americans.

Another factor you failed to mention is that the United States is bogged down in its longest shooting war in history with an enemy of many diverse nationalities (including Americans) whose only common bond is Islam.  If you think back at the public and private discourse about our enemies during World War II, namely Japanese and Germans, the stigmatization of Muslim-Americans is almost negligible by comparison.   CAIR, who presented the survey data to the media, was named as an unindicted conspirator in the funding of Islamic terrorism, and they have close links with the Muslim Brotherhood which has been outlawed in numerous countries including Egypt.   During World War II, the equivalent Nazi organization – the German-American Bund – was resoundingly vilified by German-Americans, including such notables as Babe Ruth.   One year after American’s involvement in the war, German-Americans published a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning Nazism in 10 major American newspapers. (See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_America_Bund)   Why haven’t Muslim-Americans taken a similar position condemning the likes of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations?  

I yearn for more honest and more investigative reporting from the LA Times.  It’s a cop-out to merely parrot the groundless complaints by cry-baby CAIR.

Sincerely,

Chris (last name deleted) 

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Let us be clear; bullying is wrong, and that includes religious bullying. It is wrong to intimidate Jewish students on college campuses, and bullying of Muslim students in secondary schools is just as wrong. At the same time, the LA Times article raises more questions about CAIR's honesty and objectivity.  As usual,  Southern California CAIR director Hussam Ayloush, who has a long history of complaining about Islamophobia,  is front and center. It is also noted that one of the source materials was co-authored by UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian,  He is an anti-Israel activist whose other pet cause is Islamophobia. At Berkeley, Bazian runs the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.

To sum up, it seems CAIR launched a study that came up with numbers that didn't make its case about widespread Islamophobia, so they had to put their spin on it to explain the unexpected number of positive responses.