{"id":1589,"date":"2018-06-29T16:30:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.22.110.190\/english\/?p=1589"},"modified":"2018-06-29T16:30:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T11:00:01","slug":"are-you-a-muslim-i-hate-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/are-you-a-muslim-i-hate-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAre you a Muslim? I hate Muslims\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

My neighbour Arifa, a forty-five-year-old art curator, is the mother of two boys, who studied in the Lotus Valley International School on the Noida\u2013Greater Noida expressway. A major terrorist attack had occurred the night before. Saad, her ten-year-old younger son, was then in class 5. In his classroom, the newspaper was lying on the teacher\u2019s desk as the students waited for their English class to start. The teacher walked in, picked up the newspaper and read aloud the headlines about the attack to the class. \u2018What is happening in the world!\u2019 she exclaimed with a sigh as she sat down. Suddenly, one of the students called out Saad\u2019s name loudly. \u2018Saaad,
\nyeh kya kar diya tumne?<\/em>\u00a0<\/sup>[What did you do, Saaad?]\u2019<\/p>\n

There was silence in the class. The words stuck in Saad\u2019s throat. He felt all eyes on him, waiting for him to say something. He was hot and angry. But he couldn\u2019t find the words to retaliate. The question settled uncomfortably in the classroom, filling the air with tension. Through the incident, the teacher did not bother to look up. \u2018I kept waiting for my teacher to react and scold the classmate, but she didn\u2019t react. She kept sitting there in front of us without saying a word. After a while she stood up and began the class. I was silent, I didn\u2019t respond and kept sitting there. I didn\u2019t really know what to do.\u2019<\/p>\n

Arifa says the unmistakable changes came in after the national election campaigns in 2014. \u2018People just became very in-your-face with their feelings about Muslims. And this I noticed was being reflected in their children at school. Bullying had always existed, but it was different before, largely comprising childish rebukes and stupid, dumb things being said to each other in schools. This has changed now. When a Muslim student is bullied it is on pronounced religious lines. Now he is called Baghdadi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani or simply a terrorist. Everyone\u2019s speech is borrowed from the language used in the news [channels].\u2019<\/p>\n

While such slurs have been used since the 1990s, the tone and intensity have changed, especially over the last five years. Earlier the remarks were innocuous and infrequent. Now they occur more often and are marked by hostility rather than humour. Not that humour justifies the taunts. It shows how deeply entrenched the association of a Muslim to terror is. The context is different now and possibly feeds on the changes \u2013 global terrorism in the name of Islam has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years with ISIL (or ISIS) alone responsible for 95 per cent of deaths from claimed terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the past decade has seen a rise in Hindu right-wing sentiment within India and a slew of distorted narratives that portray Muslims as invaders, anti-national and a threat to national security. These took centre stage in the run-up to the polarizing national elections of 2014. From my conversations with many others across the country, it seems this consciousness has now been handed down to the children of our country.<\/p>\n

Arifa\u2019s elder son, Raffat, was called a \u2018terrorist\u2019 casually in a fight when he was seventeen years old in 2016. Arifa was appalled and immediately contacted the mother of the name-caller through the class WhatsApp group. \u2018But your kid also called my child names! He called him\u00a0fat<\/em>!\u2019 was all that the mother had to say.<\/p>\n

\u2018She was actually defending her boy and equating a terrorist to fat. I had nothing more to say to her. The kids had been friends from a long time,\u2019 recounts Arifa, shaking her head. She took the matter to the class teacher. \u2018There was no action. They simply said that they would talk to the parents. But then it kept happening repeatedly. And after a while my boys refused to report it to the school authorities,\u2019 Arifa said.<\/p>\n

As the brothers have grown older, they have become pricklier. Even though they still get bullied, they don\u2019t want to appear like sissies and carry tales to their mother, preferring to \u2018fight it out\u2019. The verbal abuses often turn into physical scuffles and fights in the playground or school buses. Arifa is usually very vocal and assertive of her rights, but in this case, over time she has given in to silence. \u2018I keep asking them to not react as the political climate is such. One never knows when things get blown out of proportion,\u2019 says Arifa sadly, with a tinge of fear in her voice.<\/p>\n

Raffat disagrees. \u2018If they think we are terrorists then we will show them what we can do. How can they say that to us? Every time there is a terror attack in the news, my classmates ask me the next day,\u00a0Arre yeh kya karwa diya tumne?\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>[What have you done now?] As if I am responsible!\u2019 When I asked Raffat why he gets into physical fights instead of complaining to the school authorities, he says that there is no point in trying to
\nreason away the unreasonable. \u2018If they want to fight, we cannot shy away!\u2019 said the visibly upset young man.<\/p>\n

The bullies are only repeating what they hear in their homes. Our conversations are laced with hate and awareness of the \u2018other\u2019, and it is natural for children to start mirroring this in their words. Arifa says, \u2018I told my boys it\u2019s best to ignore such absurd comments. Because they all have to together travel in buses and study. It\u2019s not possible to avoid each other or live in animosity. It could lead to being pushed out from groups or being cold-shouldered.\u2019<\/p>\n

Arifa\u2019s comment reminded me of eleven-year-old Maaz, who studies in class 6 in a branch of Delhi Public School in the national capital region (NCR). Born to parents in an inter-religious marriage, he tells me how he is socially boycotted by his classmates due to his Muslim surname. He is often called a terrorist and nobody wants to play with him. \u2018They are all busy playing with each other and don\u2019t include me,\u2019 he tells me forlornly. \u2018I sit with a Muslim girl during the tiffin break. She has some friends who are OK with me. I have no friends,\u2019 says Maaz.<\/p>\n

Quite often, the battles start even earlier. \u2018My little one is only six and a half years old and got hit for being a Muslim in school,\u2019 says Zareen Siddique, whose daughter Samaira studies in an internationally accredited school in Noida. A student sitting on the same bench as her asked, \u2018Are you a Muslim?\u2019 He then started hitting Samaira, saying \u2018I hate Muslims.\u2019 Zareen says it took a few days before her daughter could open up about it. \u2018I was appalled and shocked. I immediately called up the class teacher who had a two-word response, \u201cIt happens.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Excerpted with permission of Author from the book, Mothering a Muslim<\/em>, published by Juggernaut Books.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Cover photograph used for representational purpose]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excerpt from the book, Mothering A Muslim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":1590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1589"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=1589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}