A video showing a teacher deliberately disrupting Muslim students as they were praying is gaining much attention. She unkindly crossed their prayer mats, blowing a whistle, insinuating that she is entitled to interrupt because she follows Jesus. “I believe in Jesus, so I’m interrupting the floor,” she said in the viral clip. 

In the brief video, two kids are heard worshiping and are observed reading lines from the Qur’an just before the unidentified teacher enters the room. She was shocked to discover that they had invaded her office, and in outrage, she accused them of practicing magic. 

“Hold on, this is in my office, and y’all doing this magic?” she yelled. 

A student was practicing “sajdah,” the portion of the Islamic prayer in which a person momentarily kneels, and their forehead contacts the ground when the instructor suddenly stepped over to their prayer mats and seemed to have pressed his hand with her shoes. 

Indignantly, she demanded to know who had permitted them entry into her office.

Although the exact date of the incident is uncertain, the video was uploaded to TikTok on Wednesday and garnered over 3 million views before being reposted to Twitter on Thursday.

The incident happened at Franklin Academy, a charter school in Broward County, north of Miami. The occurrence caught the school’s attention, and as a result, the instructor was fired for her behavior, according to Local10 News. 

 

The First Amendment protects student-led prayers, therefore students may pray while they are not participating in school activities or interfering with class time. 

Following the circulation of the “extremely distressing TikTok video” to the school’s administration, Franklin Academy released a statement saying that an investigation had been initiated. 

“While we do not discuss personnel matters, we can share with you that the teacher in question is no longer a member of the Franklin Academy staff. We thank our parents for partnering with us and trusting us with their child(ren) and their education. Through the continued communication that we foster as a team, our schools can only become stronger,” the charter school shared in a statement to local news outlet. 

“Franklin Academy does not tolerate discriminatory behavior. As many know, we are an International Baccalaureate (IB) school system, and as part of the IB initiatives to which we are committed, Franklin aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural and racial understanding and respect. We not only look for our student body to develop these traits but for our faculty and staff to exemplify them as well,” they emphasized furthermore. 

The act was denounced, and the video was called “repulsive,” according to Wilfredo Ruiz, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) communications director in Florida. 

“To see a teacher expressing so much hate and bullying students when teachers are supposed to be the ones that protect the students and protect their good doings, such as this one,” Ruiz expressed to Local 10 News. 

CAIR Florida released a statement on Friday expressing their satisfaction with Franklin Academy’s decision to terminate the instructor who, they claimed, had participated in hate speech directed against Muslim students praying in school.
 

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