Crowds of students gathered in protest in front of seven FCPS high schools on the morning of Dec. 17 in response to an alleged hate crime incident at Fairfax High School, where Muslim student Ekran Mohamed said a classmate forcibly removed her hijab. Students across the school district chanted “hands off her hijab” and pressed for “justice now,” standing with the sophomore whose incident was swept under the rug.
The alleged assault occurred during Mohamed’s Fashion Marketing class, where she said the situation began when two of her classmates targeted her.
“[It started when one of the students involved] drew an Islamic symbol (the star and crescent) and crossed it out with a red marker, proceeding to look at me and my Muslim friends,” Mohamed said.
According to Mohamed, after confronting the two students and ultimately deciding to ignore their behavior, they continued to provoke her and her friends. After a series of heated exchanges, Mohamed decided to leave the classroom, only to be struck from behind.
“I was walking towards the door when he grabbed my hijab,” Mohamed said. “Out of self defense, I punched him in the stomach, causing him to let go of my hijab as he grabbed me. After that, I fell and hit the side of my body on a desk and my chest hit a chair. [As my teacher escorted me out of the room,] I had a hard time breathing, then I collapsed on the floor and the school called the ambulance.”
Fairfax High School responded to the situation by placing Mohamed and her alleged attacker under in-school suspension, where they were held in the same room. The suspension will appear on Mohamed’s permanent school record.
“I was upset and angry that this could happen in a place where I was supposed to feel safe,” Mohamed said. “[Being in the same room] only made me feel more unsafe and uncomfortable.”
The Fairfax City Police Department became involved in the case, launching an investigation after hearing about the incident via social media. In a press release from Chief of Police Colonel Erin Schaible, the police determined that “the physical altercation between [the] two Fairfax High School students was not a hate crime” and that “the investigation revealed there were no racial comments made by either student.”
Mohamed and witnesses rebuked the police department’s claim that there was no evidence of a hate crime. Muslim Student Associations (MSA) across Fairfax County decided to take the issue into their own hands, hosting school walkouts and releasing statements regarding the incident.
“The police have handled this case absolutely terribly. We know several witnesses, many of [whom] were not even consulted. [Of those that were], the police quite literally put words into their mouths,” said freshman Zakareya Hamed, President of the McLean MSA. “As a result, 21 MSAs across FCPS released a joint statement on Dec. 19 [and had] seven schools do walkouts, with collectively around 5,000 students involved.”
Mohamed’s classmates created a petition pressing Fairfax High School to take accountability. As of early Feb., it has amassed over 35,000 signatures.
“What happened with the student protests is historic,” said Abrar Omeish, the first and only Muslim FCPS School Board Member-at-Large. “This has never happened in the history of Fairfax County Public Schools. Having [thousands of] students—most of them not Muslim—protesting and speaking in support of their Muslim classmates and against Islamophobia [is unheard of].”
Virginia House of Delegates member Ibraheem Samirah also spoke out about the incident. In a letter addressed to FCPS on Jan. 10, Samirah advocated for changes in curriculum and effective policies for combating Islamophobic behavior in schools.
“This horrific event, taking place in one of the most diverse school districts in the country, demonstrates that we need to take immediate action to prevent anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia in our school system,” Samirah said in his letter.
Hamed and other concerned students throughout the county insist that long-term changes must be made to combat the ongoing issue.
“Punishing one student does not fix a systemic problem—a systemic problem with Islamophobia embedded in the curriculum and within the students,” Hamed said. “We need to be able to say that teachers need mandatory training on Islamophobia and that the curriculum needs to be redesigned.”
Still, progress has been slow, but the latest school board’s focus on equity in schools could bring much-needed change to Islamophobia.
“The average American knows very little about Muslims and has a negative view,” Omeish said. “There needs to be a lot more done. The same harmful curriculum that I learned in school is being taught, and students want to see it removed.”
While the incident at Fairfax High School wasn’t the first of its kind, Fairfax County’s Muslim community hopes that it will be the last.
“This is a wake-up call,” Omeish said. “Let us speak so that FCPS never forgets until we get the solutions that we’re looking for, and let’s work together to build a school system that is better for Muslim students and for all students.”