A backlash against American Muslims is leaving a mark on some of the nation\u2019s youngest minds.<\/p>\n
After seeing presidential candidate Donald Trump call on television for barring Muslims from entering the country, 8-year-old Sofia Yassini checked the locks on her family\u2019s home in Plano, Texas, imagining the Army would take them away. She raced to her room and stuffed a pair of Barbie dolls, a tub of peanut butter and a toothbrush into a bag. She insisted on bringing boots for the long boat ride she imagined was coming.<\/p>\n
When her mother, Melissa, arrived home from her work as a human resources manager, Sofia ran into her arms and cried.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want people to understand the impact that their words have on these children,\u201d said Melissa Yassini, who described the experience in a Facebook post that had been shared more than 21,000 times as of Monday. \u201cWe often forget, we\u2019re waging war on one another with words, and we\u2019re adults. We can take it. The kids are suffering with this. They go to school every day and they\u2019re afraid to tell people they\u2019re Muslim. This has to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anti-Muslim sentiment was building in the days before 14 people were killed Dec. 2 in the massacre at a disability center in Southern California by a Muslim couple investigators say were inspired at least in part by the Islamic State group. Some governors had already said they wouldn\u2019t allow Syrians fleeing civil war into their states because of extremist fears. Experts say Trump\u2019s call on Dec. 7 to keep all Muslims from entering the United States \u2014 a plan he said would apply only temporarily and to non-citizens \u2014 only fanned the flames.<\/p>\n
Parents say their children hear disparaging remarks in their own communities, see hateful bumper stickers and T-shirts, and have had friends abandon them because of their faith.<\/p>\n
Ahad Khan, 12, came home from school in rural Westminster, Maryland, in tears because his best friend called him a future terrorist who couldn\u2019t be trusted, according to Ahad\u2019s father, Raza Khan.<\/p>\n
Khan, the chairman of the science department at Carroll Community College, shared Ahad\u2019s experience in an open letter to Trump on Facebook. As of Monday, it had been shared more than 4,300 times.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is the engine right now for that fearmongering,\u201d Khan said in an interview. \u201cI don\u2019t think he realizes that his words matter. He doesn\u2019t realize the damaging effect his words can have on people, especially kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the minds of children \u2014 many long on imagination and short on political understanding \u2014 phrases like \u201ctotal and complete shutdown of Muslims\u201d can be traumatic, experts say.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren expect that society will be nurturing and protective,\u201d said Mark DeAntonio, a child psychiatry professor at the University of California Los Angeles. \u201cStatements implying detainment or exclusion for arbitrary reason like race ethnicity or religion create anxiety and trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some children have questioned their faith and place in American society.<\/p>\n
Kafumba Kromah, of Minneapolis, said his 8-year-old daughter asked him: \u201cWhy we are Muslims? Why can\u2019t we be what everybody else is?\u201d His daughter encouraged him to cancel a trip to his native Liberia for fear he would be barred from returning.<\/p>\n
Mehnaz Mahmood, of Dallas, said her 7-year-old son urged her to switch to a black-and-white hijab \u2014 so she would look more like a nun \u2014 after they were subjected to anti-Muslim remarks outside his school this week.<\/p>\n
Sam Madi, of New Orleans, watched coverage of Trump\u2019s remarks with his 11-year-old son. He said he feared anti-Muslim sentiment would set back progress in integrating Muslims into American society. Zane Madi plays soccer and spends most weekends with his mother helping the city\u2019s homeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not prepared for this,\u201d said Madi, whose father fled Iraq in the 1970s. \u201cWe\u2019re not prepared to sit and educate our children why they\u2019re not any different from anybody else. I don\u2019t think any parent is prepared for that. I don\u2019t care what religion you believe or don\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parents needn\u2019t shoulder the burden themselves, said Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at UCLA. Teachers should talk about not generalizing Muslims and ask children to reinforce their friendships with Muslim students, she said in an email.<\/p>\n
As Khan, the father in Maryland, tucked his son in last week, he left him with the words he recited when he became a U.S. citizen two decades ago: \u201cOne nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why, I don\u2019t know how people forget that,\u201d Khan said later, fighting back tears. \u201cWe have to; otherwise we\u2019re dividing ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Sisak reported from Philadelphia. Reach Mike Sisak on Twitter @mikesisak. See some of his work at http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/journalist\/michael-r-sisak .<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to delete an incorrect reference to investigators saying the couple in the San Bernardino shooting had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group; only one of the couple is believed to have done so. This story has also been updated to correct the first name of Raza Khan\u2019s son to Ahad, not Ahed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A backlash against American Muslims is leaving a mark on some of the nation\u2019s youngest minds. After seeing presidential candidate Donald Trump call on television for barring Muslims from entering the country, 8-year-old Sofia Yassini checked the locks on her family\u2019s home in Plano, Texas, imagining the Army would take them away. She raced to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-29539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29539"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}