Little autistic Bilal,reciting Qur’an, please make du’a for him as it was difficult for him to learn. May allah grant him ease (Aameen)
Welcome to America! – Hope you like the Autism!
By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.
They come to America in search of a better life. Their children get autism.
I wonder if they wish they’d just stayed home.
As reported by Elizabeth Gorman in the Minneapolis Post and David Kirby in the Huffington Post (click HERE), there’s something unusual going on with immigrant Somali children in Minnesota and autism. It might also be happening with other immigrant groups.
According to Gorman’s article, about 6 percent of Minneapolis’ students are Somali-speaking, but “more than 17 percent of the children in the district’s early childhood special education autism program are Somali speaking.” (It’s estimated that 15,000 to 40,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, the largest Somali population outside of East Africa.)
She later goes on to quote Dr. Chris Bentley, the director of a nonprofit in Minnesota that assists children with autism and their families as saying, “We’re definitely seeing it, and something is triggering it.”
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