Westfield State University class plans protest at West Springfield High School after 3 Muslim sisters said they were bullied
By Jack Flynn
Thursday, April 10, 2014
WESTFIELD — Students at Westfield State University are planning to picket West Springfield High School to protest what three sisters called a pattern of anti-Islamic bullying by students and inaction by school officials.
The sisters – Najma, Hibo and Filsan Hussein, all of West Springfield - gave their account of verbal and physical abuse to a class at Westfield State taught by associate professor Kamal Ali, who is also vice president of the Islamic Society of Western Mass.
Following the session, more than 30 students signed up to stage a protest at the high school in the next few weeks, Ali said. “It’s a question of the day and time; we know the place,” the professor said.
West Springfield Superintendent of Schools Russell Johnston said in an interview earlier he could not comment on specific cases, but said the school system has strict anti-bullying policies and multiple programs designed to prevent, investigate and resolve bullying complaints.
“We take every allegation of bullying very seriously and we absolutely investigate and take appropriate action,” he said.
Two of the Hussein sisters are seniors at West Springfield High School and a third, Filsan, transferred to a private school last year following a fight in school cafeteria.
Born in Kenya to a family of Somalia immigrants, the sisters arrived in Baltimore in 2000 before moving to Holyoke and finally West Springfield in 2004.
As young children, they knew nothing about the 9/11 attacks by Islamic terrorists, the United States war in Iraq and Afghanistan or Islam’s broader global struggles, they said.
“We are not related to Saddam Hussein,” Filsan Hussein told the class.
“We didn’t even know what one (a Saddam Hussein) was,” she added.
Still, by choosing to wear traditional Muslim headscarves to school, the girls might as well have been radical Muslims in the eyes of many students, they said.
“We were called terrorists, suicide bombers, towel-heads” and other insults, said Najma Hussein, adding the sisters also suffered routine physical abuse, from being pushed, tripped and punched to having their headscarves pulled off.
School officials were aware of the bullying, and made periodic, if ineffectual, attempts to end it, the girls said.
“Their attitude was if the (headscarves) are the problem, then don’t wear them,” Najma Hussein said.
The hostility culminated in a fight in the school cafeteria between Filsan Hussein and another girl in March 2012 that led to assault charges being filed against Hussein in Springfield District Court.
The assault charge was eventually dropped, but related public disruption charges against the other two sisters are still pending, Ali said.
A videotape of the fight will be a crucial piece of evidence in the case, according to Ali and Springfield lawyer Mickey Harris, who also spoke to the class.
Harris said the girls treatment at West Springfield High School raises larger legal issues.
West Springfield High School Principal Michael J. Richard also attended the class. When several students questioned his presence, he said he wanted to hear the girls' stories as well as suggestions on how their problems could be resolved.