Muslim Heritage Month

There are over 2 billion Muslims in the world, 3.4 million of them reside in the United States. They are our students, colleagues, and neighbors, making up the very fabric of our societies. Muslim innovations impact our daily lives, from the expansion of coffee and toothbrushes, to creating the first University and surgical equipment. To teach about Muslim history, is to in fact teach about U.S. history. After all, the very first Muslims in the United States were enslaved Africans, and it was their blood and backs that this country was built upon. 

We stress the importance of celebrating Muslim Heritage Month, especially in today’s climate, when the media often dehumanizes Muslims. This, in combination with government officials’ and university policies that criminalize Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, and racist rhetoric, has led to hate crimes being at an all-time high in our country. Thus, it is our responsibility as educators to equip our students with knowledge in hopes of creating safer communities.

Bias language and racist rhetoric are rampant in our current curriculum. We ask you as educators to familiarize yourself with terminology that can be dehumanizing, discriminatory, and generalized so that you don’t subconsciously repeat harmful images that have been portrayed by our news agencies, media outlets and government officials. We ask you to notice the erasure in our current curriculum of Muslims, from Black Muslims to Palestinian Muslims, and how detrimental this is to our students. Including true and deep representation of Muslims and Islam is one of the ways to combat stereotypes and discrimination in our schools.

We recognize that one month could never do justice in fully covering a people’s history, similar to Black History Month or Native American Heritage Month. Therefore, we challenge you to extend these lessons beyond the scope of just this month of January. If we hope to teach authentically, then we must weave teachings about Islam and Muslims into our overall curricula and instruction. Otherwise, we run the risk of tokenization.

By TWM