“You go to school with other people of different backgrounds and you realize ... what the promise of the United States is. And when you see it not living up to that promise, then I think it instills in us a sense of wanting to help and fix that.”
“Our kids are going to be well after the 9/11 era,” one teenager said. “They should not have to continue fighting for their identity.”
But the incident also spurred a determination to speak out for herself and others that has helped get her to where she is today: a community organizer strongly favored to win a seat on the New York City Council in the upcoming municipal election. A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted ahead of the 9/11 anniversary found that 53 percent of Americans have unfavorable views toward Islam, compared with 42 percent who have favorable ones. This stands in contrast to Americans’ opinions about Christianity and Judaism, for which most respondents expressed favorable views.
A young Hanif gathered neighborhood friends, and an older cousin helped them write a letter to then-President George W. Bush asking for protection.But being warriors often carries a price, with wounds that linger. “I remember being like, ‘Hey, do you have to read that?’” Pathan says. The agent “just looks at me like, ‘You know, I can read anything on your computer. I’m entitled to anything here.’ And at that point, I remember having tears in my eyes. I was completely and utterly powerless.”“You go to school with other people of different backgrounds and you realize ... what the promise of the United States is,” he says.
She found home in a vibrant public housing complex in the city of Kent, south of Seattle. There, residents from different countries communicated across language and cultural barriers, borrowing salt from each other or watching one another’s kids. Olow felt she flourished in that environment.Karen Ducey / AP
“‘Who am I?’ — which I think is what many young people kind of go through in life in general,” she says. “But for those of us who live at the intersection of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia ... it was really hard.” One of his most memorable interactions, he says, was at Liberty University in Virginia, where he spoke in 2019 to students of the Christian institution. Some, he says, still call him with questions about Islam.Shams wishes his current work wasn’t needed but feels a responsibility to share a counternarrative he says many Americans don’t know.
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