After posting Instagram videos inspired by a nationwide trend to promote their clubs’ upcoming events, the Muslim Student Associations (MSA) at Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology (TJ) and Langley High School immediately faced backlash—the videos were deemed hurtful to the Jewish community.

In the TJ MSA’s video, which was posted on Oct. 24, two students are asked if they are going to the club’s meeting. After they decline the offer, other students pretend to kidnap them. One student uses a kuffiyeh, an Arab garment which has come to represent Palestinian resistance, to cover a student’s face. Another pair of students then enter the screen, and are asked the same question, to which they immedatiely agree. The video ends with both students who were kidnapped smiling at the camera, and text reading, “No one was harmed in the making of this video.”

“We’ve seen how popular this trend gets, and how easy it is to attract an audience with it,” said Muqawim*, one of the students who participated in the video. “So we followed the same trend, double-checked everything and that was the whole gist of it.”

TJ Principal Michael Mukai addressed the situation in an email on the morning of Oct. 27, when concerns over the video had spread online.

“These videos depict violence, [and] is traumatizing for many of us to watch, and, given world events, especially traumatizing to our Jewish students, staff and community,” Mukai wrote in the email, referring to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack when Palestinian militant group Hamas kidnapped Israeli hostages.

Mukai’s email was echoed in FCPS’s public statement about the videos, which adds, “FCPS would never consider these videos to be appropriate or acceptable content.”

“It’s almost chilling to see teenagers so lively acting out something that is so horrific,” said Gulia Franklin, CEO of Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, in a statement to The New York Post.

The students who were involved in the video maintain that they had no intentions of promoting such behavior.

“It’s an insane accusation,” Muqawim said. “FCPS gave a statement directly to Fox News claiming that we were acting out the incident of the hostages, and they talked about us in a bad manner and allowed so much hate to come towards us.”

Shortly after the video was posted, TJ’s administration pulled students out of class for questioning.

“[Principal Mukai] took one specific view of the video without even knowing the students’ intent. They made their judgment before they even spoke to the students,” said Sabira*, mother of one of the students involved in the video. “They were dehumanizing the students and treated them like criminals.”

The students were then punished with in-school suspensions, which required the students to sit in a designated room for the duration of the school day.

“It was clearly a matter where they rushed and did not know what to do,” Muqawim said. “I asked the administrators where in the SR&R does the administration have the power to put us under in-school suspension while the situation is still under investigation, and they would give different answers like ‘parental pressure’ or it’s a ‘personal decision.’”

According to Sabira, the administration didn’t communicate with the students’ parents until four days into the suspensions.

“Mukai did not respond to any of my emails. I called him on Wednesday to tell him I don’t know what’s going on, but [I was only able] to speak with his assistant,” Sabira said. “I waited in the office for hours for him to come. They said he was busy, so I asked to spare five minutes to understand the situation and what was going on with the children.”

On the following Thursday, Mukai and one of the student’s parents were finally able to meet.

“He claimed to me after four days and over eight attempts to meet with him that the reason why he wasn’t meeting with us was because he was trying to stay neutral,” Sabira said.

The questioning concerned parents, prompting them to contact the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for help.

“We started our investigation and we became immediately concerned because other videos of this nature, including one at TJ where someone imitated a bomb with their cell phone, weren’t called out,” said Corey Saylor, the Research and Advocacy Director of CAIR. “But in this case, what was different was the kids’ religion and the Palestinian clothing these kids had on, so we were very concerned that they were being treated differently because of their religious and ethnic identity.”

Towards the end of the week, another concern pointed out was a hoodie one of the students in the video was wearing. On the black hoodie, there was an outline of the Palestinian-Israeli land with red, green and white, which are the colors of the Palestinian flag, pasted over it.

“They did not [mention the hoodie] until the last day of suspension that week,” Muqawim said. “We never pointed out the hoodie in the video, nor [were we] trying to represent anything with it.”

Langley’s MSA posted a similar video several weeks before TJ. The administration chose to hold a peaceful discussion between Muslim and Jewish students.

Other clubs in Fairfax County also participated in the same trend involving performing a form of punishment when a student declines an offer to the club’s upcoming event, such as the Student Government Association at TJ and the Indian Student Association at Chantilly, leading to more concerns about students being targeted due to their identities.

“It is apparent that any threat TJ perceives from the video comes from racist tropes and stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs,” CAIR wrote in a letter that was sent to Mukai and Superintendent Michelle Reid, demanding a reversal of the suspensions.

As the investigation develops, FCPS has yet to make a further statement.

“FCPS’s role is to ensure that students are not subjected to attacks based on things that are occurring in the larger world and aren’t relevant to Fairfax County,” Saylor said. “Students have the right to speak and express themselves, and it’s the school’s obligation to protect those students from bigotry and politicalization of what they’re doing.”

*The names Muqawim & Sabira are pseudonyms to protect the identities of individuals in FCPS.*