(AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher)
An 11-year-old Muslim boy was reported to Britain’s anti-terrorism watchdog after a teacher mistook his response that he wanted to give “alms” to the needy for “arms”.
The teacher had asked members of the class what they would do if they had a lot of money, and the boy was participating in the classroom discussion.
The primary school pupil, whose family described him as “intelligent”, “widely read’ and deeply interested in medieval history, responded that he would “give alms to the oppressed.”
Alms is an archaic way of describing charity and it is often used in cases where religious people provide help to the most vulnerable and needy in society.
The teacher apparently misheard this as “give arms” (weapons) and the child, who comes from a Muslim family, was referred to Prevent, a controversial government counter-terrorism program designed to stop radicalization.
“You’ve got a child who has made a very good and positive comment about giving aid, alms, to the people who need it across the world,” said Attiq Malik, an attorney representing the pupil’s parents, according to The Telegraph.
“But because of (the boy’s) race or religion, the teacher has interpreted it as being something completely opposite, and reported him to Prevent.”
The boy’s father, an engineer, and mother, a dentist, were worried the referral would stay on their son’s file, The Guardian reported.
“A good teacher would have asked a follow-up question to make sure what they think they heard is exactly what they heard. Or am I asking too much?” @marthagogarty posted on Twitter.
This was not the first time such a case had been referred to the U.K.’s Prevent program.
In 2016, a nursery worker referred a 4-year-old Muslim child to the program after the child drew a picture of his father with a cucumber which the worker interpreted as a cooker bomb. A 10-year-old Muslim boy who misspelled the word “terraced” as “terrorist” to describe the kind of house he lived in was interviewed by police.
“Criminal legislation and safeguarding policies have always existed to protect the public and vulnerable members of our society,” attorney Malik said. “There is no need for a policy which is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
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