Author Discusses being Young and Muslim in America
SOURCE: LANCASTER ONLINE
BY: JOAN KERN
About 100 people turned out to hear Moustafa Bayoumi speak Thursday evening at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lancaster on being young and Muslim in America.
The talk was based on Bayoumi’s 2008 book, “How Does It Feel to be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America,” which won an American Book Award. He is also the author of “This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror,” published in 2015.
Bayoumi was born in 1958 in Zurich and raised in Ontario, Canada. He earned a doctorate degree at Columbia University and is an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, the City University of New York.
SherAli Tareen, a Franklin & Marshall College professor of religious studies, introduced Bayoumi at the Chestnut Street church.
A public intellectual
“Bayoumi is among those rare scholars who possesses the gift of presenting difficult and complicated narratives and arguments in an eminently accessible fashion,” Tareem said. “He writes lyrically, forcefully and in a manner that is both politically audacious and yet abundantly measured and generous. Indeed, he personifies the best of the term: a public intellectual.”
“How Does It Feel to be a Problem?” is set in Brooklyn and tells the stories of seven Arab Americans, ages 19 to 22. Bayoumi recounted the stories of Rasha and Yasmin in his talk.
He began by speaking about 9/11.
“I was living in New York City before, during and after 9/11,” he said. “No one in New York City will ever forget 9/11. It was a beautiful Tuesday that went from the best kind of day to the worst. It was tragic. The city was full not of vengeance, but of tragedy.”
Writer and scholar Moustafa Bayoumi speaks about being Arab in post-nine-eleven U.S. at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Lancaster City, Thursday, March 29, 2018.
K. SCOTT KREIDER | LNP CORRESPONDENT
He remembers the smell of the burning buildings and the fear and anxiety attached to Arab Americans in the city.
Later, the mood turned dark, he said. He recounted the story of a friend who was a highly skilled engineer but had a hard time finding work after 9/11.
“Six months after 9/11, hate crimes went up 110 percent, and they never went back down to what they had been before 9/11,” he said. “It was time for us to figure out how to move forward.”
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began.
How to survive
“There was a sense that we were always asking, ‘Are we going to survive? And how?’ ”
A few years later, he began to think maybe he should write about the tragedy.
“I believe it’s important to record our history,” he said.
Bayoumi decided early on to try to write responsibly.
“Prior to 9/11, Americans thought very little about Islam. The names that came up were Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X; after 9/11, the name that came up was Osama bin Laden. It was a terrible shift.”
Quoting a Washington Post survey, Bayoumi said the attitude since 9/11 toward Muslims has only gotten worse, yet he ended his talk on a high note, urging all to focus on hope.
Yoseph Keisi, a Muslim ninth-grade student at Manheim Township High School, deemed the talk “great.
