The Muslim family of an award-winning computer data scientist decided to leave the United States after the latest incident of Islamophobia involved the youngest child being repeatedly bullied.
Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, a two-time Fulbright Scholar who uses data to prevent terror attacks, moved his family across the world to Pakistan over the weekend after sharing a heartbreaking post on Facebook featuring his 7-year-old son with a sling on his arm after he was attacked by bullies in Cary, North Carolina.
‘Welcome to the United States of America of Donald Trump,’ he wrote as a caption for the October 8 post on the social media site.
‘Meet my son Abdul Aziz. He is in grade 1, bullied and beaten by his own classmates in school bus for being a Muslim’.
Usmani’s wife, Binish Bhagwanee, told him that their son walked off the school bus traumatized, bruised and battered after a classmate allegedly tried to force him to eat food that wasn’t halal.
When the first grader refused, he claims that five students ganged up on him and made fun of his name while punching him in the face and kicking him in the stomach.
‘Welcome to the United States of America of Donald Trump,’ he wrote as a caption for the October 8 post on the social media site.
‘Meet my son Abdul Aziz. He is in grade 1, bullied and beaten by his own classmates in school bus for being a Muslim’.
Usmani’s wife, Binish Bhagwanee, told him that their son walked off the school bus traumatized, bruised and battered after a classmate allegedly tried to force him to eat food that wasn’t halal.
When the first grader refused, he claims that five students ganged up on him and made fun of his name while punching him in the face and kicking him in the stomach.
Usmani said they then twisted his son’s arm and called him ‘Muslim’ over and over again.
‘He was born and raised [in the United States]. He was born in Florida. As American as you can think of. He likes Captain America. He wants to be president of the United States of America,’ Usmani told The Huffington Post while speaking from Pakistan.
The concerned parents reported the incident to the school and officials launched an investigation.
However, they said initial interviews with other students and the bus driver didn’t confirm the child’s account of events.
Lisa Luten, a spokeswoman for Wake County Public School System, told The Huffington Post that no students on the bus or the bus driver said they saw an altercation.
She claimed the family didn’t report that the students made references to Muslims, Pakistan and Islam, however, an email the father sent to the school principal over what happened states what was said to his son.
‘The kids who beat him up mentioned Muslims, makes fun of his name starts with Abdul and reference his preference of eating only certain (halal) food,’ Usmani wrote in the email.
‘My son is very traumatized and shocked as he has just celebrated his birthday with his classmates few days ago.’
Luten said that the behavior described by the little boy is ‘not tolerated’ in the schools and that the investigation is still ongoing.
After seeing her youngest son of three hurt, Bhagwanee told her husband ‘I’m done with the US’ on Friday.
The family arrived on Monday in Islamabad, where Usmani has an apartment that they plan to live in for now since they feel America isn’t safe.
‘It’s very heartbreaking and sad,’ Usmani said. ‘It’s not the America we know about, care about and want to live in’.
Usmani recounted how when his middle son was eight years old, he became very angry when his classmates told him that his father was a terrorist after they saw him drop him off at school one day.
‘He asked me if I was a terrorist,’ Usmani said.
He explained his wife asked him not to go to the school, ‘just so my children would not face any discrimination because of my face’.
Usmani shared another incident in which his oldest son, 14, saw one of his peers bring a knife into school that his father had purchased in Colombia.
He decided to bring a knife to school that Usmani bought in Pakistan, however, students called him a ‘terrorist’ and ‘ISIS’.
The school immediately went into lock-down and he was suspended for six months after the incident.
