Kids in elementary school are discussing Osama. My kid recently participated in such a discussion and was pretty unaffected. However, she did ask me about this guy who looks like “one of the uncles she sees at the masjid.” She said, “mom he looks like he was a nice man, he was a muslim, how could he have done something so terrible?”
So I took a few minutes to explain that there are good and bad people in every religion and that at the end of the day, understand that only God can make a correct judgement on us. I also encouraged her to avoid participating in religious/political discussions as she is not completely informed of the facts.
However, a friend’s daughter who is in a higher grade ended up having a sour argument at school when some kid accused muslims of being terrorists.
So is this important to you as a parent? How do you prepare your child?
I dont have any children yet. expecting our first in june inshaAllah. but when considering the workd we live in, I dont think we can turn away from the facts that muslims are perceived as terrorists and islam has a very very negative image so when we teach our children about islam we also need to tell them about the image the world has of islam based on misunderstandings and bad representatives like osama and co. so that the children can distinguish between the real islam and the islam that is portrayed in media and thereby in schools etc.
I would however not start this distinction at a very early age and would asess the situation my kids would be in at school. I would also discuss this with the teachers so they make sure noone is bullied at school.
A friend was sharing this with me the other day.. her daughter had a substitute teacher on Monday (third grade) and she told children Osama was a mass murderer and killed so many people etc. etc so later her mom asked her how the class responded to that and her daughter said, "someone raised their hand and shared that their dog had had puppies over the wknd."
little people, big thoughts :)
I believe kids pick up more than what adults think.. it's always better to have a dialog with them and tell them about good and bad people everywhere and probably my approach would have been telling my child that Islam comes from the word salam which means peace and anyone who says otherwise isn't followng the true Islam. and there is no point to defend it in words, but you have to show it by example.. dun get into heated debate of how Islam spreads peace or too much about what media says.. thats not the point there!!!