POPSUGAR

High School Yearbook Wrongly Calls a Muslim Girl "ISIS" in Her Photo

May 9 2016 - 3:45pm

The name Bayan Zehlif is nowhere close to ISIS, a known terrorist group operating in places like Syria and Iraq. But that's what one high school wrote under a Muslim student's yearbook photo. Zehlif, who attends Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, shared this snapshot on Facebook of her being named "Isis Phillips."

Upon hearing the news, the high school's principal, Susan Petrocelli, posted on Twitter that the school was investigating the "misprint" and offered up apologies.

A student named Trevor Santellan, who worked on the yearbook, told ABC News [4] that there was a student named Isis Phillips at Los Osos but that she had transferred to another school.

However, Bayan, who wears a hijab, doesn't believe that this was simply a mistake. "I am extremely saddened, disgusted, hurt and embarrassed that the Los Osos High School yearbook was able to get away with this," she wrote in a Facebook post. "The school reached out to me and had the audacity to say that this was a typo. I beg to differ, let's be real."

After the incident, the Council on American-Islamic Relations revealed that civil rights attorneys are also investigating the situation.

Hussam Ayloush, the council's Los Angeles executive director, told CNN [5], "We join with the family in their concern about a possible bias motive for this incident and in the deep concern for their daughter's safety as a result of being falsely labeled as a member of a terrorist group. No student should have to face the humiliation of being associated with a group as reprehensible as ISIS."

Since Bayan shared what happened to her on social media, she has received an outpour of support, including one Facebook user who wrote [6], "Honestly, I have no words. I'm so disgusted. Damn."


Source URL
https://www.popsugar.com/news/Muslim-Girl-Called-ISIS-Yearbook-41249311