A student in Australia was the victim of Islamophobia when her teacher forced students in her class to look at an offensive cartoon of Prophet Muhammad.
“My media teacher put this cartoon on television and then said it is the Prophet Mohammed. It just shook me to the core. I was really sad and shocked,” 11th grader Sara Ammar from Melbourne told Anadolu Agency.
The 16-year-old said she was not the only one in shock but everyone in the class. “They were all speechless like how I was.”
There were several other Muslim students in her class, according to Ammar.
Although she expressed discomfort with the cartoon, her teacher did not answer her request to leave the classroom.
“The teacher kept on talking about how Muslims killed an innocent person who created that cartoon,” she said, noting that she does not want other children to experience similar humiliation.
“It is a very traumatizing,” she said.
Her father Muhammad Ammar demanded that the tearcher be suspended and a formal apology from the school. “We can’t accept anything against our Prophet and Islam,” he said. “When I went to take her up, she started crying. She said that they have shown the content.”
Right after the Islamophobic episode, Muhammad Ammar talked to school officials and wrote to the concerned departments of government.
Authorities contacted the elder Ammar about the incident and the family received an e-mail from a member of parliament.
The French weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo, published a blasphemous cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in 2015, which sparked massive protests across the Muslim world. — AA