Early in 2016, nervous and learning the ropes, Fajer Hamoud stumbled her way into the teacher’s staff room at a northeast Victorian high school, looking forward to starting first day as a work experience teacher.
Three years on, Ms Hamoud still struggles to come to terms with what happened during her first teaching placement.
Fajer Hamoud says she was bullied as a work experience teacher for her faith.
Her mentor came highly recommended and so did the school, so the last thing she was expecting to experience was bullying from her superiors. She still can’t recall the memories without tearing up.
“She told me that if I complained nobody would believe me,” she says.
Ms Hamoud’s mentor opened the front page of a popular Australian newspaper and made remarks she says "traumatised" her.
“Muslim terrorists, they call Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar and they bomb people,” her mentor said loudly, Ms Hamoud recalls.
The words still echo in her mind daily.
“Allahu Akbar is a very sacred phrase to me. I say it five times a day when I pray.”
Ms Hamoud, who proudly wears an Islamic headscarf, migrated to Australia from Kuwait when she was seven years old. She decided to become a teacher to help young kids receive a good education – something hard to come by in her homeland.
A 2005 Yale study showed recently arrived migrant and refugee women are among the most vulnerable to discrimination in the workplace worldwide. In Australia, migrant women are also less likely to pursue discrimination claims, an AMES study found.
Ms Hamoud says she didn’t immediately report the bullying and discrimination she faced at the school, in fear of being let go.
"I’ll never forget how she intimidated me, but when I complained and said she made direct bigoted comments about my religion they made up so many excuses for her."
Muslim women wearing head coverings especially suffer discrimination at work, says Aymen AlAssad, president of Victorian Islamic youth organisation Beacon of Hope argues.
“Discrimination] definitely is a problem for young women in the workplace wearing a hijab. There’s a certain responsibility for young girls to represent their religion, they’re the flag barriers and that symbolism is a lot for a young girl to take on and often it can be a burden."
For Ms Hamoud, her first work experience as a school teacher resulted in so much self-doubt that she almost dropped out of her Masters degree to pursue a different career all together.
When I complained and said she made direct bigoted comments about my religion they made up so many excuses for her.
"It shattered me. I would have restless nights, waking up every hour from nightmares. I would break into a sweat, have anxiety attacks … she shattered my confidence."
Advocacy and education on the effects of discrimination and racial vilification could be the solution to combat future discrimination,
“People need to be educated as to the effects of discrimination and prejudice and racial vilification," says Mr AlAssad, who finds instances of Islamophobia tend to escalate following incidents of terrorism.
The Islamophobia Register Australia research backs this claim. The academic report shows Islamophobic incidents in Australia spike significantly after every heavily reported incident of terrorism overseas.
“The prejudice intensifies and young women are targeted even more, in the workplace or wherever it may be. As an organisation dealing with young people this is a re-occurring issue,” he says.
According to research conducted by Centre for Multicultural Youth, a large percentage of Muslims in Melbourne feel they don’t belong in Australia. The study also found Muslim youth were less likely to say they could "definitely" find someone to help them if they were in trouble.
The organisation's CEO, Carmel Guerra, says what happened to Ms Hamoud, while unfortunate, isn’t uncommon among Muslim youth the Centre for Multicultural Youth has worked with.
“There are always going to be employers that are like that, and if they are we need to do something about calling them out, and making them accountable for what they’re doing and that’s what [the centre] wants to do,” Ms Guerra says.
Their research has found that many Muslims in Melbourne experience discrimination at work and also while trying finding work, which affects others from culturally linguistically diverse backgrounds.
The Centre for Multicultural Youth has implemented employment programs which match youth who may have experienced discrimination with employers that are accepting of their faith and culture.
The need for better mental health support is an issue for Australian Muslims. After her experience, Ms Hamoud says she found herself depressed and anxious, however she was without mental health support and felt unable to turn to others in her community.
Next month, a specialist not-for-profit organisation, Muslim Mental Health Professionals, will launch nationally, to provide mental health support for Muslim and diverse cultural communities.
While the initiative could have come much sooner for Ms Hamoud, she believes it will help prevent others in similar situations feeling alone.
"Many Muslims who see mental health professionals find they’re often misunderstood due to their faith, which leads them to stop seeking help," says the organisation's president Aysegul Sertel, who wants to also to educate GPs and other mental health professionals about the particular cultural sensitivities to observe when treating Muslim clients.
“We have unique needs based on our faith, and other professionals working with Muslim clients experience resistance, or they don’t know how to reach out because of cultural sensitivities."
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