Just over a year ago as part of my role as the outreach worker for a major national project designed to tackle anti-Muslim hate crime, I spent an afternoon in one of Rotherham’s secondary schools.

The school had been identified as a hotbed of racial tensions which had worsened in recent times as the EDL had made Rotherham a strategic flashpoint.

Myself and a colleague spent an entire morning at the school alongside a community police officer, a victim of Islamophobic abuse and very hospitable staff.

The message we aimed at delivering centred on universal human rights and the right of people to live their lives free from physical and mental abuse.

Martin Luther King Jr. amongst other great civil rights leaders from history was mentioned and real and harrowing examples of abuse meted out to innocent victims punctuated the presentation.

What came back was shocking and left staff slightly red faced and to their credit honest of the challenges they faced.

Fourteen year olds resolutely defending hostility towards their Muslim neighbours.

When it was said that nothing justified the abuse of a woman just because she decided to dress differently, the response was that it was because “she probably has a bomb underneath her clothes".

Muslim's were openly derided as terrorists by a significant number of over zealous white students.

Students whom I later realised were themselves victims of a raucous media campaign to give them an enemy and distract them from the disfranchisement and misery faced by many of their families.

Perhaps our words and slides were just too high brow and academic for young minds to relate to.

So when a victim stood to speak honestly and emotionally of her harrowing experiences which included having dogs set upon her and her young children and having an unopened beer can thrown at her whilst she was driving, the unrelenting coldness amongst the audience remained.

Maybe the sight of a young classmate breaking down in tears after relating the incident of seeing his mother racially abused at a local supermarket over the weekend just gone would bring a modicum of sympathy. Again none was forthcoming.

Amongst the young faces and clearly in the minority young Muslim girls wearing hijabs, others without and their male compatriots sat glum faced seemingly unable to speak up or defend their rights to be treated as human beings.

A personal interest in observing patterns in the behaviour of different communities peaked during the interval and I discussed the matter with one of the teachers. She was glad that I had also noticed what she had observed in the last ten years of teaching.

According to her there was a sense of fear and apprehension among Muslim children in general that seems to have increased in correlation with the growing intolerance towards their belief and identity.

This teacher's recognition of a crisis was welcome, unlike that of some of her counterparts.

As I was to find out the vitriol was not exclusively a peer to peer exchange but came from those who were supposed to stop the abuse.

On one occasion after a weekend dominated by EDL protests one schoolgirl was told to remove her headscarf by a teacher with the words, "don't you know the EDL don't want you lot around."

A head teacher when asked by a parent to deal with an issue of her twelve year old Muslim student who had been threatened with violence and derided as "terrorist and Bin Laden", responded in an aggressive tone "our children don't behave like that".

A more extreme example came when a young girl of ten, whose mother reverted her faith and became Muslim, was forced to eat pork by a head teacher and other staff despite her protestations.

She was also ordered to remove her headscarf and questioned as to why she wanted to be "like them lot", (finger wagged at a group of Muslim students).

At the level of social work the issue was twisted and presented as one of a mother forcing religion on her child despite the child's protests to the contrary.

There were other incidents where the spill over from schools had reached the homes of some students with one farther telling me the story of the targeting of his fifteen year old daughter.

After being tormented in school she was followed home by a group of students, had her headscarf pulled of from her head in broad daylight on a busy road and when she reached the sanctuary of her home it proved to be no such thing. The house was pelted by rocks on several occasions. Again the school and authority response to the bullying left a lot to be desired.

These are just a snapshot of the incidents that came to my attention. Others weren’t prepared to go on record or have the abuse they suffered reported as they had little trust in those that were supposed to defend them and their children.

Last year Sarah Soyei, from the anti-racism charity, Show Racism the Red Card, highlighted the increase in "racist bullying towards Muslims students, and those from Roma, Gypsy and travelling communities."

The fact that many schools and law enforcement agencies don't categorise any hate crimes or incidents under the banner of Islamophobia, preferring to use the more broad base classification of racism masks the true extent of the problem.

It is disconcerting that such disturbing sentiments and actions emanated from educators as opposed to the uneducated bigots that far right activity is normally associated.

Teachers have always held a unique and lofty station in the conscious of Muslim children. The great Muslim thinker Abu Hamid Al Ghazzali emphasised this point by saying, "the teacher is more important then the father."

The statement which came in the eleventh century is somewhat enduring however it must not be adhered to in any submissive manner. A distinction between disrespect and challenging any prejudicial view or action are necessary, be it teacher or otherwise.

Muslim children many of whom are now third generation immigrants need more than ever to be empowered to do this.

The sense of hopelessness many feel at present in the face of an increasingly hostile environment is another disturbing rung on the growing ladder of a civil rights crisis facing Muslims.

In the school environment Muslim parents must not be afraid to challenge incidents and acquiring the help of agencies such as Tell MAMA in doing so should be exploited.

Those who would seek to belittle and torment their children must be held to account.