Yesterday somewhere in North America a children’s school was holding a pride month celebration as you’re aware this is June and many of the Muslim children did not show up and they came after the parade finished. The teacher brought the Muslims into the classroom and severely reprimanded, the children maybe you’ve heard the audio has gone viral and this isn’t the only time this has happened a few months ago in England a video went viral. Where a young child a teenager or something said that you cannot be queer and Muslim at the same time and the teacher literally went ballistic on the child yelling and screaming, that tolerance is a British value if you’re British you must be tolerant you know so yelling and screaming that you have to be tolerant at this you know 15 year old Muslim kid.
So we this is not the only time today as well I just tweeted some things happening in Maryland a few months ago in in Detroit. I mean this is now becoming a national crisis and some key points are raised to that we need to have a national conversation on some of the points that are being raised is that tolerance is a two-way street the teacher said in this audio clip. that if you want to be tolerated as a minority you have to return the favor and tolerate other people that are minorities, okay.
quid pro quo you scratch my back I scratch yours, the teacher said in this audio that last month they had a Ramadan awareness and everybody came, last month or two months ago the Ramadan awareness and the whole school was aware raising awareness of Ramadan.
Today the teacher said we have LGBT how come you did not come so you’re not being fair in this in this understanding the teacher also said that if you don’t agree with these values, then you need to go back where you came from. If you don’t agree with these values you don’t belong here and the British teacher also said similar things that these are British values right, tolerance is a British value if you don’t have this value then you don’t deserve to be in Britain, and all of this by the way it is actually frightening that the power dynamics are so unequal and nobody seems to be commenting on this.
You have a grown adult in a position of authority, you have a teacher that is in a position of authority, yelling and getting angry at a Young Middle School teenager who’s trying to make sense of the world and instead of even if you firmly believe in your worldview even if you do is this the way you should get your point across as a teacher to a student yelling and making the student feel intimidated.
So today’s brief topic is to tackle this philosophy head-on. Like Allah in my heart felt for this 15 year old child my heart went out to these youngsters they’re lost what do you say to an adult screaming at you what do you say that if you want to be tolerated you’re brown skin basically your brown skin your Arab Muslim background you’re weird from the perspective of our culture we’re tolerating you. if you want to be in our society they say you had better tolerate these people as well. What do you expect a 15 year old to respond?
Well I felt Annie, so it’s our job to give them some talking points. that’s the purpose of today’s I hope Insha’Allah We Begin that conversation I’m not gonna say I have definitive answers because this is a complex topic. how do you explain to this you know teacher, how do you explain that that analogy is incorrect, and we have to give these simplistic waterproof talking points to the Next Generation and we also have to explain to our own kids at home. because that’s what they’re telling us right that hey you know if you want to be tolerated, Then you have to return the tolerance, it’s a two-way street over here.