British Muslim fights dismissal from teaching assistant job after objecting to 9/11 clip

Suriyah Bi was fired from her job at the Heartlands Academy last year after raising concerns about footage of people jumping to their deaths from the twin towers being shown to 11 and 12-year-olds with special needs. According to Ms Bi, the school said she took offence because she is Muslim – something she denies.

Suriyah Bi pictured with Indian tennis player Sania Mirza at the 2015 Wimbledon tennis tournament in London. Courtesy Suriyah Bi

LONDON // A “proud British Muslim” is fighting her dismissal as a teaching assistant after she objected to special needs children aged 11 and 12 being shown footage of 9/11 victims jumping to their deaths from the twin towers.

Suriyah Bi, who rose from working-class immigrant origins to graduate from Oxford University, says the school has falsely claimed that she only took offence at the YouTube clip because of her faith.

The 24-year-old – who has promised to “move mountains” in her quest for justice – is demanding compensation and an apology from her former employer. She also refuses to accept any gagging order preventing her from talking publicly about the case. Unless an agreement is reached between Ms Bi and the school at a mediation hearing next Wednesday, the case will go to an employment tribunal in December.

Ms Bi was supporting an English teacher at the Heartlands Academy in Birmingham last year when the clip was shown during a classroom discussion of Out of the Blue, a poem by Simon Armitage inspired by the September 11 attacks.

She told The National that she considered the images too graphic and distressing and was concerned about what their psychological impact would be on already vulnerable children – particularly as the video carried a warning that it was unsuitable for under-18s. Ms Bi shared these concerns with her immediate manager, the head of support staff.

“[The head of support staff] referred me to my head of department who said I was right to raise my concerns and assured me there would be an investigation,” Ms Bi said. “But in my very next class, just 40 minutes later, I was called to a meeting with the same head of department and a human resources officer and told the school no longer considered me suitable for employment as I was uncomfortable with the curriculum.”

“The meeting lasted just a minute. I was told my contract was being terminated and that I was to remove all my belongings and leave immediately.”

Ms Bi claims the school implied in documentation supporting the dismissal that her outlook at work was influenced by her religious and educational background. It even mentioned her attendance at one of the schools implicated in the so-called “Trojan Horse” affair, where allegations were made that extremist Muslim groups were trying to take control of educational establishments in Birmingham.

The eldest of eight children born to parents who emigrated to Britain from Kashmir, Ms Bi became head girl at the school in question. But, she says, she had already left and was studying at Oxford University’s Magdalen College when the Trojan Horse controversy arose.

The documentation supporting Ms Bi’s dismissal also suggested that she took offence at the 9/11 clip solely because she is a Muslim.

“This is completely false,” said Ms Bi, who is now halfway through a doctorate at University College London and hopes to work in policy and research. “I am a proud British Muslim, not an extremist. I regard 9/11 as a crime against humanity and Daesh not as animals, since that does an injustice to animals, but as something I do not even have the words to describe.”

Heartlands also listed other grounds for her dismissal, including poor timekeeping and criticism of colleagues – both of which were unjustified, she says.

According to Ms Bi, an £11,000 (Dh50,331) settlement – to take account of 15 months’ loss of earnings – was canvassed at a preliminary hearing by E-ACT, the educational trust that runs Heartlands. But she claims she rejected this figure, at which point the trust “then agreed they would negotiate the sum at the settlement”.

The trust denies this version of events, however.

“As we are in the middle of [a] legal process it would not be appropriate for the trust to comment further other than to say that contrary to recent media reports, the trust has at no point made any offer of compensation to Ms Bi,” it said.

The PhD student said she would resist any gagging order, which she believes the trust will make a condition of settlement, “because I want the right to raise awareness that institutionalised, organised discrimination does happen and needs to be tackled head on”.

Ms Bi’s local MP, Liam Byrne, from Britain’s opposition Labour party, is supporting her in the case and said he was considering calling for a government inquiry into E-ACT’s fitness to run schools.

“The employers have sought to smear Suriyah Bi’s character and present her to teaching agencies as a bit of a troublemaker. In fact, she has shown tremendous courage in persisting with her fight,” he said.

“On the video, I feel her judgement was right. To present footage of one of the most traumatic events of recent years to young children was deeply inappropriate. As a parent, I would have been outraged had my children been shown such material at school.”