A California school has recalled its yearbook after wrongly identifying a Muslim student as “Isis,” an acronym for the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Officials at Los Osos High School, in Rancho Cucamonga, realised the mistake after the student, Bayan Zehlif, posted on Facebook her yearbook photo, which shows her smiling and wearing the hijab.
A caption underneath identifies her as Isis Phillips.
“I am extremely saddened, disgusted, hurt and embarrassed that the Los Osos High School yearbook was able to get away with this,” Zehlif wrote on Facebook.
“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.”
School officials told the Los Angeles Times that Zehlif’s name was mixed up with that of another student named Isis.
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“The school will assure students, staff and the community that this regrettable incident in no way represents the values, or beliefs, of Los Osos High School,” the school district’s superintendent Mat Holton told the Times.
He said the school noticed the mistake last week, but only after some 300 copies had already been distributed.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations urged an investigation into the incident that “deeply embarrassed” Zehlif and her family.
“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 labelled as a member of a terrorist group,” Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, said in a statement.
“No student should have to face the humiliation of being associated with a group as reprehensible as ISIS.”
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