CAIR advocacy manager Masih Fouladi, left, and civil rights attorney Marwa Rifahie hold a press conference addressing a report documenting faith-based bullying of Muslim students in schools on Monday, October 30, 2017. The report, based on a survey of Muslim students ages 11 to 18, shows that 53 percent of the students who were surveyed reported some form of bullying. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

CAIR civil rights attorney Marwa Rifahie takes part in a press conference addressing a report documenting faith-based bullying of Muslim students in schools on Monday, October 30, 2017. The report, based on a survey of Muslim students ages 11 to 18, shows that 53 percent of the students who were surveyed reported some form of bullying. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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ANAHEIM — Muslim students in California are bullied at a rate that is more than twice the average of Muslim youths nationally, according to a report released by the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The report, which was issued by the group’s Anaheim-based Los Angeles chapter Monday morning, Oct. 30, said 53 percent of the 1,041 Muslim students surveyed, between age 11 and 18 and enrolled in California’s public and private schools, said they were bullied in 2016 — mocked, verbally insulted or abused — because of their religion.

Nationally, according to a 2017 Department of Justice report, about 20 percent of Muslim students say they have been bullied.

In addition, 26 percent of the California Muslim students surveyed reported being victims of cyberbullying; 57 percent said they saw their peers make offensive comments about Islam and Muslims online; and 36 percent of female respondents reported having their hijabs, or head scarves, tugged or pulled off their heads.

This is CAIR-LA’s third bi-annual report on bullying of Muslim students, with incidents rising sharply in number compared to the 2013 and 2015 reports, said Masih Fouladi, advocacy manager for the group.

“We’ve also seen an emboldening of these bullies statewide,” he said. “There has been an increase in physical contact and aggressive acts such as the pulling of head scarves causing some students to stop wearing hijabs to school.”

The role of President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric cannot be ignored, said Marwa Rifahie, a civil rights attorney with CAIR-LA and lead author of the report.

“The results of this survey reveal that Muslim students have had to carry a heavy burden every day at school by facing bullies whose religious intolerance is now being legitimized by a sitting U.S. president,” she said.

Survey results also showed an increase in offensive comments made by teachers, administrators and other school officials directed at the religion of Muslim students. Only 30 percent of students reported that they felt their problems were solved by an adult, a decrease from 42 percent in the 2015 report.

The answer to this increase in campus bullying is better training and education for students and teachers, Rifahie said.

“When teachers and students are less informed, bullying is more likely to occur,” she said.

Iman Saymeh, an Orange County parent, said her 15-year-old son was so traumatized by bullies in March that he didn’t want to go back to school.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” she said. “He was crying. He was angry. He said kids circled around him, called him a terrorist and said horrible things like Muslim men rape women.”

Saymeh said she had to keep her son home from school for a day. But what’s worse was, she said, she didn’t get any help from school administrators. The boys who bullied her son were never held accountable, she said.

So, Saymeh took matters into her own hands, getting counseling for her son from area imams. She organized bullying forums for teens through her local interfaith council.

“My son could see that teens of other faiths and backgrounds were also being bullied, that he was not alone,” she said. “I think he’s able to cope with it better now.”

A Ventura family approached CAIR-LA as recently as last week when their seventh-grader was upset by a sheet of paper handed to him by his social studies teacher. Printed off a website, it detailed so-called aspects of Islamic Sharia Law including how a man could marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she turns 9 and that a man has “sexual rights” over a woman who is not wearing a hijab.

In that case, the student missed several days of school because he was afraid of his teacher and his classmates, but the school district has not taken any action, Fouladi said.

He says parents should watch for red flags and talk to children.

“If your child doesn’t want to go to school or comes home with missing items or torn clothes, it is important to find out what happened,” Fouladi said.

The incidents have increased since the presidential election, Rifahie said.

“It’s definitely a lot more extreme than before,” she said. “Teachers are beginning to take political positions and children are mimicking those behaviors.”

Schools should do more to improve counseling programs and provide better response to students who are bullied, Saymeh said.

“Schools really have the opportunity here to expand minds and educate the next generation,” she said. “But unfortunately, that’s not being done.”