Zehlif posted a photo of her yearbook photo to Twitter, saying only, “I guess I’m Isis in the yearbook”.
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A California high school has asked students to return almost 300 yearbooks that wrongly identified a Muslim teenager wearing a traditional headscarf as “Isis”, officials said on Monday.
Bayan Zehlif, a student at Los Osos High School in California, said she was “disgusted, hurt and embarrassed” when her name was misprinted as “Isis” in the yearbook.
A photo of the yearbook’s characterization has gone viral on social media – with more than 4,500 shares on Facebook and more than 4,300 retweets on Twitter – and it has also stirred up intense debate in Zehlif’s Rancho Cucamonga community, about 20 miles west of San Bernardino.
“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 district’s superintendent told the Times that the fake names – among them “Tay Tay Shaniqua”, “Crisphy Nanos” and “Laquan White” – were a “regrettable mistake”.
Zehlif spoke out from the headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is a group who wants a full investigation done.
Holton says yearbook distribution has been halted until the error is fixed and those who received them have been asked to return them.
He said an investigation is being carried out. “I beg to differ, let’s be real”. When she turned to the page that held her photo she was shocked to see that had been identified as “Isis Phillips”.
A student at the Rancho Cucamonga high school who worked on the yearbook insisted the printing was an honest mistake, and said he believed Bayan’s reaction was “out of proportion”.
As the school year draws to a close each spring, American high school students celebrate the time-honored traditions of awkward proms, senior pranks and offensive and discriminatory yearbook “typos.” .
A friend of the family said the intention behind the incorrect name seems obvious.
While “Isis” used to be a popular name for girls, today it’s more closely associated with the self-identified Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which controls swaths of Syria and Iraq.
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CBS Los Angeles reports the girl’s parents are outraged and believe she has been subjected to an anti-Muslim slur.
