The post-Sept. 11, 2001, world in which one leading presidential candidate is calling for an all-out ban on Muslim immigrants has led to an alarming rise of Islamophobia across the nation and in Wisconsin, according to the director of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition.
Janan Najeeb, the coalition’s president and founder, said perhaps what’s most alarming is the fact that the incidents are increasingly being reported in Wisconsin schools.
Some of the more well-known incidents include the case of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, who was arrested after a misunderstanding about a clock that he brought to his school in Texas. Similarly, schools in a school district in Virginia were shut down for a day after parents revolted over a homework assignment on Islam.
In Wisconsin, memories are still haunted by the Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, where it was believed the victims were targeted simply because they appeared Muslim. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on a "litany of incidents" at schools in Brookfield, Mequon and Oak Creek.
Najeeb said she believes that anti-Muslim threats and taunts are common in today’s classrooms, with many cases going unreported.
"The problem is that you don't really hear about it," she said. "I think the problem is that a lot of time the Muslim community and families are not willing to come forward and make an issue out of that. They feel targeted to begin with."
Earlier this year, Najeeb launched a series of workshops to help Muslims and their supporters in the community respond appropriately to anti-Muslim rhetoric. She also began meeting with school administrators to make sure they enforced a strict zero-tolerance policy on hate speech.
But in some ways, she said her efforts have been undermined by the current presidential race.
"The problem is that we’re dealing with a time when we have candidates running for the highest office in the country who are doing specifically that," said Najeeb, referring to Republican candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail. "So, it becomes very difficult to teach children what is unacceptable when you see individuals running for the highest office doing exactly that."
Najeeb said Trump’s remarks linking all Muslims to terrorists have led to "mainstreaming hate." She added that Islamophobia has become so commonplace that people feel comfortable talking about Muslims in ways they would never talk about any other ethnic, religious or racial group.