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The view from a Muslim school
At an Islamic school in Tampa, an X-Teamer chats with a group of fifth-graders about subjects from their favorite pizza to feelings about more sensitive matters.
By SAM FRENCH, Times X-Team
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 15, 2001
[Times photos: Toni L. Sandys]
At Universal Academy of Florida in Tampa, girls are required to wear traditional Muslim head scarves. Do they wear them at home? No way, said the girls in our interview group.
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TAMPA -- Banners along a fence near the Universal Academy of Florida proclaimed these messages:
"We pray for peace on earth."
"Muslims condemn any terrorist acts on America."
A sign on a pole encouraged students: "Be a role model and strive for excellence in all you do."
I saw the signs as I approached the Islamic school a few weeks after the tragedy at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash site. I felt bad for the innocent people who died in the attacks, and I wondered if Muslim children felt the same way.
So I went to the school, for Muslim kids in day care through the 12th grade. The academy looks much like any other school, with a gray climbing gym in the shape of a castle on the playground, along with a slide. The 11-year-old school, attended by about 280 kids from around the Tampa Bay area, has basketball, football and volleyball teams called the Warriors. It's also home to a Girl Scout troop.
Off one classroom, there is a playroom containing all sorts of toys, including a train set. In the science lab, a snake and a tarantula were at home among other animals. As at many schools, a fourth-grade classroom displayed bulletin boards full of kids' artwork about the attacks, pictures of people giving blood and planes going into the towers. Captions included, "I can help in giving blood and money," "I feel miserable" and "These are not the acts of true Muslims."
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An Islam primer for children
The U.S. government says that the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Muslim followers of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian millionaire and a Muslim. |
But some things there are very different from most schools.
Along with science and math papers in English, I noticed lots of Arabic letters on the walls.
Next to the school is a mosque (Muslim church). There are separate entrances for men and women (and boys and girls). On the outside, there are turrets with moons on them. There is a floor where men stand and one where women stand. Inside, you are not allowed to wear shoes. The carpet is red and bare with white lines where you stand when you pray.
Another difference at the school was the Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy parked outside in his cruiser, a precaution the school has taken since the attacks.
I was able to talk with some fifth-graders, ages 10 and 11, at a picnic table in a courtyard surrounded with little kids riding on tricycles. The boys wore khaki pants and knit, collared shirts. The girls wore jumpers that fall just below the knee and long pants, with scarves on their heads so that only their faces were showing. They said they wore the scarves, or hijab in Arabic, "to hide our beauty."
I spoke with one boy and three girls, whose names we are not using at the request of their parents. What follows is an edited version of our conversation, about both ordinary and extraordinary things.
Both Arabic and English are used at the school. Here, a fifth-grader works on an Arabic lesson.
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Question: What do Muslims believe in?
Answer: We believe in one God.... He can give life, and he can take it away any time he wants.
(They talked about the holy month of Ramadan, when they fast and are required to do other things):
Answer: You can't say anything mean to each other.
Answer: You have to be nice to each other.
Answer: God makes you feel how the poor people around the world feel.
Question: How does your day start?
(All the kids were talking at once, answering that they wake up at dawn and say the first of their five prayers. Then they go to school and study the Koran.)
Question: What interests you?
Answer: Chasing my brother.
Question: (To the girls) Why do you wear the scarves?
Answer: To hide our beauty.
(The girls all talked about how hot the scarves are around their necks, and that it was a rule that they wear them at school.)
Question: Do you wear them after school at home?
Answer: No way.
Question: What do you like to read?
Answer: E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
Answer: E.B. White, Stuart Little
Answer: Gary Paulsen, Hatchet
Answer: E.B. White, Stuart Little
Question: What do you like to eat?
Answer: Pizza!!!!
(But not pepperoni.)
Answer: We're not allowed to eat any pork.
Sister Yasmine Wahab helps a student with her lesson. The terrorist attacks, say the students we interviewed, were wrong and were counter to their religion.
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Question: What's your favorite kind of pizza?
Answer: Plain cheese. Deep dish.
Question: Where do you like it from?
Answer: Papa John's.
Answer: Pizza Hut is better.
Question: How do you feel about what happened with the attacks?
Answer: We feel horrible.
Answer: We feel terrible. Innocent people died for no reason.
Answer: That wasn't nice.
Answer: It's against our religion.... They say in our religion we shouldn't attack anybody unless they attack us first.
Question: How have you been treated since then? Answer: Sometimes people give me dirty looks.
Answer: They say (cuss words) while we're driving.
Answer: We have to watch each other when the girls go out (because the scarves draw attention).
Answer: The people who go by on trucks -- you know those types of people? -- they always stick their tongues out at us. Or you can see that they're saying bad words to you.
Answer: I have been having middle fingers raised at me.
Answer: People started following us. They started cussing. They open their door and start cussing.... They shot our mosque in Spring Hill.
Question: What do you do when people are mean to you (since the attacks)? Does it hurt your feelings?
Answer: We ignore them.
Answer: It does hurt, but our God says we're not allowed to be rude to them.
Question: How can we make things better around the world?
Answer: I think we should really investigate, for the bad, bad people.
Answer: Everybody in this world, we're brothers and sisters together.
Question: What have you prayed for since the attacks?
Answer: We pray for peace on Earth.
Answer: We've been praying that everything resolves and that people stop being rude and knocking down American symbols.
Answer: There should be peace everywhere on Earth now.
Question: What do you think is going to happen?
Answer: Nobody knows what's going to happen but God.
Answer: I don't want anything bad to happen, like a war.
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A week later, the banner about Muslims condemning terrorists acts was no longer there. It had been slashed through, apparently by vandals.
Here's the rest of today's Xpress
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