Meet Our Jersey Muslim of the Month: Laila Khan
By: Alaa Essafi
Laila Khan waits for no one. Khan, an outgoing 11- year-old activist in the making was given the Young Leader Award by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ) at their annual fundraising banquet. She charmed the crowd with her mellifluous voice and impassioned speech about the work she’s done to make public schools, specifically in her town, Montclair, recognize Eid Al-Fitr as a school holiday.
“Why don’t we have off for our holidays too? It doesn’t make sense.” she probed matter-of-factly.
“They didn’t talk about Ramadan or Eid. We learn about Christmas and Hanukkah every year. I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn about other people’s holidays but what about the other ones? In Montclair, we have off for Columbus Day, but we don’t have off for Eid,” she said.
The sixth-grader also has high academic aspirations as she endured the long application and examinations in order to be accepted into Montclair Kimberly Academy. She lamented about the stacks of summer homework but revealed that she was eager to shoulder those academic challenges because she has a shining role model: her mother. At her young age, she assuredly announced that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and eventually become a pediatrician.
“I really look up to her and appreciate her. She’s always there for me when I need her. Since I was in first grade, I’ve wanted to be a pediatrician because I love kids and I would always ask my mom for cool stories from work,” she said.
Before she moved to Montclair Kimberly, Khan attended Bradford Public School where she confided in her principal, Frances Aboushi who encouraged her to take action. With the support of her principal, Khan started a petition to garner community-wide traction for her cause.
“I wasn’t going to be stopped because no one else had succeeded in doing it before, I just decided to go for it.”
Within a few days, her petition already had hundreds of signatures in support of Khan’s efforts to get Eid to be acknowledged as a holiday by the Montclair Board of Education. After giving a passionate speech at the Montclair Board of Education meeting about the importance of inclusion, they finally passed her request of adding Eid Al-Fitr as a school holiday.
“It was the best day of my life,” she said.
She shot me a face splitting grin as she reached for a sticky note for her to record her idea before it escaped her. A conventional thirty-minute FaceTime interview turned into an hour and a half brainstorm session about how to create a club for young Muslims to embrace their heritage and Muslim identities.
She looks forward to her new chapter at her new school as a player on the school field hockey team and beginning her own initiatives for her peers to learn about each other’s respective cultures and create space for Muslim youth to come together. She wasted no time, during the interview itself to jot down ideas for a “Montclair Muslim Youth Group” that she would spearhead and include ice cream socials, monthly outings, and the opportunity for young Muslims to connect with other Muslims in their community.
Her youthful hunger for making her school, town, and community a more welcoming, inclusive place drives her to make changes to her private school’s holiday calendar as well. No doubt, we’ll be hearing her name again.