Father says Georgia teacher stopped his 13-year-old daughter, who wears a hijab, and asked if she had a bomb

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The father of a Muslim middle school student says a teacher asked his daughter if she was carrying a bomb in her backpack.

Muslims in US fear increasing prejudice on wave of anti-Islamic sentiment Read more

The school’s principal has apologized for the incident, according to a spokeswoman.

Abdirizak Aden said the teacher at Shiloh Middle School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, stopped his 13-year-old daughter, who wears a hijab, and asked if she had a bomb.

Aden told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his daughter was extremely upset by the comment and he went to the school to see what had happened.

“I was upset,” said Aden, who lives in Snellville and works as a truck driver and grocery store owner. “I was going to take my daughter out [of that school].”

“We are from Africa, we are Muslims, we live in America,” he said. “I didn’t teach my children to hate people or to think they are better than other people.”

Sloan Roach, a Gwinnett County public schools spokeswoman, told the newspaper the school’s principal had apologized to the family.

“The remark was not appropriate, but based on their conversation and investigation,” school officials don’t believe it was made with ill intent,” Roach said.

She said the comment came as the teacher was urging students to put away their backpacks.

The incident “shows the level of Islamophobia impacting people’s relationships with one another”, Yusof Burke, board president of the Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the newspaper.