UTAH: A Muslim girl was thrown out of a school bus twice in Utah state of US for donning a hijab.
\nThe 15-year-old girl, Janna Bakeer, is a student in Timpview High School in Provo City, Utah.
\nShe was taking the bus to home when the driver while using the bus\u2019s intercom said, \u201cHey you with the blue hair thingie, get off the bus, you don\u2019t belong here,\u201d according Randall Spencer, the family\u2019s lawyer.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s (hijab) a part of who I am and where I come from and a part of my religion. Every day, I match my hijab with my outfits,\u201d Bakeer was quoted as saying by ABC News affiliate WBND-LD.
\n\u201c…the bus driver, she got her speaker and I was wearing a blue scarf. And she\u2019s like, \u2018Hey, you with that blue thing, you don\u2019t ride this bus and I\u2019ve never seen you ride it so get off\u2019,\u201d Bakeer said of the incident that took place last month.
\nShe said she felt humiliated and started to cry as she got off the bus. \u201cI was just really embarrassed how everybody was staring.\u201d
\n\u201cI asked her politely, \u2018Can I please ride the bus today?\u2019 and she (driver) just put her arm and blocked the walkway to the bus,\u201d Bakeer said. \u201cI absolutely believe that it was discrimination,\u201d said the family\u2019s attorney Spencer.
\n\u201cThe bus driver didn\u2019t even know Janna\u2019s name, we don\u2019t think, and could not have checked or known she was not on the list to ride the bus,\u201d Spencer was quoted as saying the Daily Herald.
\n\u201cAll the bus driver knew is that she didn\u2019t know her before and she is a Muslim wearing a hijab,\u201d he said.
\nHowever; Caleb Price, spokesman for the Provo City School District, declined that the incident was an act of discrimination.
\nHe said that students can only ride their assigned buses and that the girl was assigned to a different one from the one she boarded.
\n\u201cFrom what we can see in our investigation, there was nothing discriminatory about the school bus driver\u2019s behaviour,\u201d he said.
\nOn the other hand, Spencer says that the girl had been riding the same bus since middle school but with different drivers.
\nThe Bakeer family had sought an apology from the school administration and asked the district to do sensitivity training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UTAH: A Muslim girl was thrown out of a school bus twice in Utah state of US for donning a hijab. The 15-year-old girl, Janna Bakeer, is a student in Timpview High School in Provo City, Utah. She was taking the bus to home when the driver while using the bus\u2019s intercom said, \u201cHey you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n