Georgia teacher criticised after asking Muslim teen if she had a bomb in her backpack
Islamophobia is alive an well in the US
The father of an eighth-grade student says a teacher at Shiloh Middle School asked his daughter if she was carrying a bomb in her backpack.
Abdirizak Aden said that his daughter, who wears a hijab, was very upset after she was stopped by a teacher and asked what she was carrying in her backpack. The teacher then asked if she had a bomb, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“It was very disrespectful. I came here to learn,” the student said. ”At the end of the day I will still get my 'A' or 'B' and leave her class.”
Mr Aden said that he now wants to pull his daughter from the school.
“We are from Africa, we are Muslims, we live in America,” he told AJC. “I didn’t teach my children to hate people or to think they are better than other people.”
The teen said the teacher indicated the comment was a joke that went too far because of "the things happening in the world right now."
A spokesperson for the school said that the remark was "not appropriate" but they believe it was not made with an "ill intent."
The Independent's requests for comment were not immediately returned by Gwinnett County Public School officials.
Yusof Burke, board president of the Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the newspaper that the incident displays the "level of Islamophobia impacting people’s relationships with one another."
CAIR, the largest civil rights and advocacy group in the US, recently said that Islamophobia is reaching historic levels in the states. The group told CNN that more than 63 incidents of harassment against Muslims have been been recorded in this year alone.