FLORIDA – A nine-year-old Muslim girl and her mother in Florida are speaking out about being bullied by other kids because of their faith.
Living in Florida, Tiffany Rivera knew there was a risk her daughter would be bullied by other kids. In an article that appeared on fusion.net, the mother and daughter described their struggles.
“She is a black American, Muslim, and female, so she got three strikes against her,” she said of her nine-year-old girl Khadijah, an aspiring entrepreneur who also takes classes in mixed martial arts.
But Rivera could never have predicted the bullying would get this bad.
She and her daughter said the kids in the trailer park residence where they live have snatched Khadijah’s headscarf off her head, made obscene gestures at her, slapped her in the face, and even threatened her with a knife.
“They throw rocks at me and call me ISIS. I don’t even know what that is,” Khadijah told Fusion in a recent phone interview. She said she was frightened to play outside now, and that she recently stopped wearing her hijab, a religious covering worn by Muslim women, because it made her a target.
Still the bullying hasn’t stopped. Rivera, who reached out to Fusion to ask that their story be told, said her daughter is speaking out to send a message of support to other Muslim American girls who are bullied for wearing the hijab at school and in their neighborhoods. “There are many Muslim girls going through what Khadijah is going through, and by speaking out she’s showing them that they are not alone,” said Rivera.
At a time of increasing Islamophobic rhetoric in American politics, Khadijah’s story is a reminder of who gets hurt when bigotry goes unchecked.
A recent survey of educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found a widespread rise in bullying, racism, and schoolyard threats against minority students, a trend many educators attributed to the rise of Donald Trump.
“They tell me to go back where I came from,” Khadijah said about the kids who pick on her. In fact she was born in Kalamazoo, Ohio, and now lives with her mother and stepfather in Orlando. Rivera said she’s been advised by neighbors to move her daughter to another city if she wants the bullying to stop, but she said she doesn’t have the money. “This is what I can only afford and this is where we are staying for the moment,” said Rivera.
She decided to homeschool Khadijah for fear of her being bullied by students at school. Little did she know it would be the neighbors’ kids who would cause trouble. Now, she said, “I try to get all the studies in so that she can play outside before the kids come home from school. She said she doesn’t allow her daughter to play outside alone without supervision anymore. “We can’t leave her outside by herself. There are boys that come up to her and slap her for no reason,” said Rivera.
Khadijah recalled one girl in the neighborhood who made obscene gestures and threatened her with a knife.
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