Arab, Muslim-American Speaks About Prejudice in Post 9/11 America
It was 2008 and Moustafa Bayoumi hoped he was writing about an era in history that had passed – the discrimination that Arabs and Muslims faced on a daily basis in a post 9/11 America.
After publishing stories of seven young Arabs from Brooklyn, N.Y., and traveling the country to talk about their experiences – and his own – Mr. Bayoumi came to the conclusion that not much had changed in the 10 years since a magnifying glass had been focused on the Arab-Muslim community in America.
“I think the issues around the book, unfortunately, are very much with us,” Mr. Bayoumi said during his presentation in the University of Scranton’s Brennan Hall on Thursday night.
Mr. Bayoumi, author of “How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America,” spoke to an audience of about 90 people, mostly students, about young adults who endured persecution and discrimination because of their ethnic background and religion.
One of the students was Francesca DeCesari, an 18-year-old freshman who said she didn’t know much about Arab-Muslim culture before taking a freshman writing seminar focused on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Taking the class and reading Mr. Bayoumi’s book was an eye-opening experience, she said.
“Where I live, and I’ve gone to Catholic school my whole life, I didn’t really know any Muslims,” the Newtown native said.
Mr. Bayoumi said he wanted to tell personal stories of real people that non-Arabs and non-Muslims could relate to on a human level.
Among them: A young Syrian immigrant whose family had applied for asylum 15 years before, roused from their New York home in the middle of the night and detained for three months under false suspicions of terrorist activity. Then there was a man of Egyptian and Palestinian descent who was shunned by a campus Arab association because he served two tours with the Marines in Iraq. A high school student who was forced to resign as student government secretary because religious beliefs prevented her from attending a school dance.
Progressive dehumanization of the Arab-Muslim world by American media created a false image for people who weren’t familiar with the cultures, he said.
“It’s easy to stereotype people when you don’t know who they are specifically,” said Mr. Bayoumi, who has been published in The London Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine.
He hoped his choice to portray the issue from a personal point of view would allow readers to shed their political and religious preconceived notions and hear firsthand accounts of real stories.
“Telling a story is a very political act,” he said. “You have to be able to let go of who you are and enter into somebody else’s experience.”
Event organizer Teresa Grettano said that as a Jesuit university, Scranton pushes for dialogue between different religious communities and social justice, making Mr. Bayoumi an ideal speaker for students to hear.
“Part of what he says in his book is that this is a group that is often spoken about, but rarely heard from,” she said.
Katie Sullivan
Times Tribune