What It’s Like to Be a Muslim American in a Post-9/11 World
Mahjabeen Syed
Teen Vouge
Late on Dec. 3, 2015, shortly after learning the names of the San Bernardino shooters, I found myself typing the names of people in my immediate family into Whitepages and erasing their profiles. One of the shooters was named Syed Farook, and although he was completely unrelated to my family, the simple fact that his first name was spelled the exact same way as our last was enough reason for my mom and I to worry about possible repercussions.
That same night, I circled my cursor over my last name on Twitter, contemplating if I should remove the latter “yed” so that I wouldn’t be ignorantly associated with him. Although my pride told me that I should stand my ground and let trolls be trolls, the anxiety and stress from the thought that my family might somehow be harassed because of my opinions or what suddenly became a “problematic” last name was enough to make me press the delete button three times.
Whenever there is a terrorist attack in the world in which Muslims are the perpetrators, I feel immensely uneasy, and I’m not the only one. Anti-Muslim sentiment in America is the highest now that it has been since the wake of the 9/11 attacks. With anti-Islamic rhetoric everywhere you look — spewed by politicians like Donald Trump, blared on TV — there’s no question that the abundance of negativity and typecasting is taking its toll on the mental health of Muslim-Americans on a national scale. Research from psychologist Mona Amer, PhD, shows that after 9/11, many Arab Americans (although not all Arabs are Muslims, 70% of those studied were) experience anxiety and depression. While this study only shows a connection, Amer notes in an American Psychological Association (APA) piece on the research that racial profiling and discrimination are likely causes. “There are things that are said in the media about Arabs and Muslims that would never be tolerated or said about any other group,” Mona says to the APA. “You receive constant messages about how your community is full of terrorists, ignorant people, oppressive people.”
Other research, conducted by Adelphia University’s Wahiba Abu-Ras, PhD, shows that among a sample of New York Muslims, 82% of studied participants reported feeling unsafe to extremely unsafe since 9/11.
“I can’t even recount all of the insults, threats, and harassment I endured after 9/11,” Aamir Merchant, a 24-year-old Pakistani Muslim who lives in Chicago, tells Teen Vogue. “It is literally a countless amount. If the events of 9/11 did anything, it raised my conscious level of being aware of things. I was always more ashamed of my race and religion at the time of those events, because society had created a scenario where I rejected who I was because of the action of a few Muslims and a lot of bigot Americans.”
He also shares that for a long time, he wanted to lie about his identity “to avoid feeling guilt or inferior.”
Adding another layer to the diminishing mental health of Muslims is the unspoken expectation by the public, and the media, for Muslims to apologize for terrorism as if they don’t condemn it already (which they do, considering Al-Qaeda kills seven times more Muslims than non-Muslims). Nahla Aboutabl, currently a 21-year-old senior at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, says that she has had to play the role of the “apologetic Muslim” at school growing up. “I was one of only two girls who wore the hijab at my middle school so it was always uncomfortable especially when discussing 9/11 in class,” she explains. “The spotlight would be cast on me as if somehow I was a spokesperson for all the ‘peaceful, America-loving Muslims.’”
But even when she did fulfill the role as “spokesperson,” she would still get attacked over her identity. “I remember a student once chasing me down the hallway in high school, yelling, ‘Go back to your country, you raghead’ – an unoriginal, but still very angering, insult to have to hear,” she explains.
Now, she no longer wears her hijab — “but I wear my identity on my sleeve regardless,” she says. “I’m proud of who I am, but I’m also aware that my identity comes with consequences. I know that my views or my name might be the reason someone decides they won’t hire me. I know that I have to fight harder to achieve my goals because not only am I a woman, but I’m a Muslim woman.”
Incidents like the ones Nahla and Aamir have experienced are not uncommon. In fact, following the 9/11 attacks, hate crimes against Muslims rose 1,600% from the year prior, according to an annual report released by the FBI. The number of reported assaults and hate crimes against Muslims in 2000 increased from 28 to a whopping 481 in 2001. Since the recent spike in acts of terrorism — ranging from the coordinated attacks in Paris in November 2015 and the San Bernardino shooting in December 2015, to the most recent incidents in Ankara and Brussels in March of this year — there has already been an uptick in the number of hate crimes against Muslims. According to new research by California State University, San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, there have been at least 38 anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S. in the month following the Paris attacks — 2.94 times the average monthly rate seen from 2010 to 2014.
Despite all this, there is hope to quash the stigma. “It is up to Muslims to change the narrative. There are some really ugly things happening all around the world and I think Muslims are afraid to speak and share their opinions,” Salam Abdulali, a 21-year-old from Washington, D.C., tells Teen Vogue. “Throughout the Quranic teachings and hadith, Muslims are told to be generous to their neighbors, whether they be neighbors in living circumstances, in transit, or temporarily in a public setting. Furthermore, we are encouraged to act even more justly and kindly when dealing with our non-Muslim counterparts. I am hopeful.”
Addressing anxiety, depression, stress, and PTSD in Muslim communities is important. By acting as if Muslim Americans do not mourn with the rest of the country when there is a tragedy headed by a group that claims to share the same religion as peaceful Muslims, you omit them from a vital conversation that they are also a part of as Americans. This only further perpetuates stigma. Maybe change starts with an act as simple as befriending a Muslim. After all, as the wise Maya Angelou once said, “Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”
Source: www.teenvogue.com