Islamophobia Just Drove This Boy And His Family Out Of America

#1

The family decided to leave USA for now, until this negative air settles.

"They keep beating him all the way from school to home on the bus," Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, the boy's father said.

"These are six and seven year old kids calling him names, with one kid punching him in the face, while two other kids attacked him, kicked him, and held his arms back."

#2

7-year-old Abdul Usmani has a sprained arm from the attack and is mentally and emotionally traumatized.

His father, Dr. Zeeshan, said that his son is "as American as it gets."

"Times are changing and it's not the America we always thought of and believed in. It's not the America that I studied in," Usmani said. "If Trump wins, America will be great again, but a great that nobody will care about."

#3

"I'm done with the U.S.," Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani's wife told him.

Seeing her youngest son, just 7 years old, walk off the school bus bruised and battered that afternoon outside their apartment building in Cary, North Carolina, was the final straw.

#4

Little Abdul Aziz, a first-grader and the youngest child of Usmani and Binish Bhagwanee, was traumatized. He told his parents a classmate had tried to force him to eat food that wasn't halal. When Abdul Aziz refused, five of his classmates ganged up on him, making fun of his name. They punched him in the face, kicked him in the stomach, and twisted his arm while calling him "Muslim" again and again, Usmani said.

#5

Usmani said that his other son has also been the victim of bullying, and in one incident a student attempted to force feed food down his mouth that went against Islamic law. Ironically, despite his sons being taunted as "terrorists," Dr. Usmani works with the United Nations to fight terrorism, working to set up safe schools in Pakistan as well as designing software that "model the effects of suicide bombings" to better learn how to reduce injuries caused by these explosions.

#6

The Council of American-Islamic Relations has since demanded that the Wake County public school investigate this violent incident. "The report of this alleged attack comes at a time of increasing bullying of Muslim students nationwide. We urge you to investigate this disturbing incident and to take appropriate actions based on the results of that investigation. All students, regardless of faith or ethnicity, must feel safe in their learning environment."

#7

Bhagwanee landed in Islamabad on Monday with their three sons. Usmani has an apartment there, and it's where they all plan to live now, because America doesn't feel safe.

"It's very heartbreaking and sad," said Usmani, twice a Fulbright Scholar and an award-winning computer scientist who uses big data to save lives from terror attacks.

#8

Dr. Usmani said that he will decide whether it's safe enough for his family to return to America after the election. "All of these events, by the neighbors and everything skyrocketed since the beginning of the presidential campaigning last year," he said. "That's why I'm coming back from Pakistan to empty my apartment and wait and see what happens."

#9

Anti-Muslim hate crimes have surged nationwide. A recent report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, documented at least 260 hate crimes targeting Muslims in 2015 âۥ a nearly 80 percent rise from 2014 and the highest annual number of such crimes since 2001.