{"id":542,"date":"2020-02-23T19:15:43","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T19:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/?p=542"},"modified":"2020-02-24T00:14:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T00:14:32","slug":"new-york-citys-generation-911-growing-up-muslim-and-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/2020\/02\/new-york-citys-generation-911-growing-up-muslim-and-american\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s Generation 9\/11: Growing up Muslim and American"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY SARAH SAKHA<\/span><\/h4>\n

My father goes by \u201cFred\u201d; his real name is Farzad, which sounds distinctly non-white and Muslim. My mother goes by \u201cSarah\u201d; her name is Soheila. They named me Sarah, so I would blend into my predominantly white, conservative hometown in Arizona, in a post-9\/11, post-Iraq invasion world, as a Muslim, Iranian-American female.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Welcome to my generation, the youngest generation of Muslim Americans with any living memory of 9\/11. Starker than our memories of that day are our memories of the world that came after. We are now in our twenties, many of us recently out of college and working, or pursuing advanced degrees. As immigrants and the children of immigrants, we (or our parents) were \u201cborn in the wrong countries\u201d \u2014 places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Iran. Post-9\/11 socialized, normalized, and internalized racism and xenophobia for so many Muslims and people of color. We are very much Muslim <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>American. Unlike our parents, we haven\u2019t Americanized or otherwise sanitized our names. But like them, we are constantly aware of America\u2019s demands and expectations for us.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We face an unremitting push and pull between our public pose and private religious identity, influenced by pressures to integrate, secularize, and Americanize. But some Muslim Americans in New York City say that to their surprise, the pressure has only grown since years immedaitely after 9\/11. I spoke with five Muslim Americans who grew up in New York: Asad Dandia of Brooklyn; high school friends Tasnuva Orchi and Sidikha Ashraf of Queens; Kareem Elsaid of Staten Island; and Nitasha Siddique of Queens. Their stories offer a glimpse into New York\u2019s Generation 9\/11.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to be a badass\u201d\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/h5>\n

Sidikha Ashraf laments her lack of good headshots. She wants to become an actress one day, but she cannot use any of her photos; they all show her hair and she just recently began wearing a hijab. On one hand, she is excited, fearless, self-confident. I am excited for her; it\u2019s hard to think of more than a handful of Western TV shows that positively feature Muslim characters, let alone <\/span>hijabis<\/span><\/a>. But on the other hand, she is now very visibly Muslim, which has created new reasons to feel nervous.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was walking around in Staples, and this one lady was just looking at me. There is no association with the hijab and stealing highlighters!\u201d Sidikha said. Humor is a coping mechanism for many; we joke about the things that are often the most difficult to confront.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For years, she has wanted to work in entertainment, but felt it wasn\u2019t a practical option for her. Then, her sense of possibility opened, when a high school friend \u2014 a fellow Muslim \u2014\u00a0mentioned how their other Muslim friend wanted to work for Jimmy Fallon.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, Jimmy Fallon is an option!\u201d Sidikha said, mimicking her disbelief. But her inclination for writing and comedy manifested much earlier than that, when she was in the third grade.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, she first started writing creatively after witnessing the ugly, heated controversy around the \u201cGround Zero mosque,\u201d as many opponents misleadingly called it. She took her first stab at writing a pilot then.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy first memory of me getting angry was watching people protest about that [the Park51 mosque controversy] and saying all these mean things about Muslims,\u201d Sidikha said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI watched an SNL [Saturday Night Live] clip, Weekend Update, and Seth Myers said one singular joke about the Park51 thing,\u201d Sidikha said. She is referring to the 2010 national debate around the proposed construction of a 15-story community center, named \u201cPark51,\u201d two blocks from Ground Zero. The center would have <\/span>included<\/span><\/a> a library, swimming pool, and daycare facility, as well as the mosque. It became a heavily local, heavily personal issue for New Yorkers, which Sidikha attested to.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know like having rose-colored glasses? That\u2019s the day the rose tint came off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Asad Dandia, that moment of reckoning came one year later, when a <\/span>sniper<\/span><\/a> was going around Washington, D.C., leaving a trail of notes by his victims. He recalls the \u201cadditional sense of urgency,\u201d given how soon after 9\/11 this was occurring.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember an Egyptian guy, Mohammed, raised his hand [in class] and said, \u2018Well, the sniper couldn\u2019t have been Muslim, because no Muslim would leave a note saying, \u201cI am God.\u201d\u2019 That was my first realization that this little incident that I considered myself part of was going to be my reality for a very long time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dandia co-founded <\/span>Muslims Giving Back<\/span><\/a>, a volunteer-based Brooklyn nonprofit operating through charity and work in the food pantry. But the nonprofit \u2013 and his mosque \u2013 were soon <\/span>infiltrated<\/span><\/a> by an NYPD informant. In 2013, Asad initiated a <\/span>class action lawsuit<\/span><\/a> against the NYPD, alongside the ACLU, NYCLU, CUNY Law School, and two other plaintiffs, citing their discriminatory surveillance program, namely the <\/span>four-year <\/span><\/a>surveillance period of the Muslim community at Brooklyn College, where Asad studied for part of his undergraduate degree.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Police surveillance \u2013 and deportations \u2013 were rampant across New York City in the post-9\/11 era, targeting certain neighborhoods. New York City Muslim Americans would face more than a decade of <\/span>high-tech surveillance<\/span><\/a>, stop-and-frisk, anti-radicalization \u201c<\/span>human mapping<\/span><\/a>\u201d of Muslim communities, and deportations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember people were disappearing left and right; later we find out they were being deported,\u201d Asad said. According to the ACLU, thousands of Muslims were detained and <\/span>deported<\/span><\/a> post-9\/11, many simply because they had overstayed their visas and turned out unlucky. Asad noted Bay Ridge, which is primarily Arab, and Foster Avenue in Coney Island, which is heavily South Asian, as the hardest hit Muslim communities. That mass deportation, which he witnessed firsthand as a ten-year old, inspired Asad to work as a Muslim community organizer when he reached adulthood. Being visibly Muslim, however, wasn\u2019t always as intuitive a decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI said I\u2019d never do this again\u201d<\/b><\/h5>\n

Asad entered the Brighton Beach subway station in New York City one day, wearing a kufiyah on his head, with a business casual dress shirt and pants. He had worn the kufiyah like that before without a second thought, and had never had any issues wearing it in public.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when I got on [the subway], I heard the loudspeaker go off, \u2018Suspicious passenger arriving,\u2019 two or three times,\u201d Asad said. Slowly it dawned on him that the announcement was about him. He instantly questioned his choice of dress.\u00a0 \u201cI sat down and froze. At that moment, I said, I\u2019d never do this again.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He never wore his kufiyah like that in public again, and he reevaluated what he could expect from New Yorkers. Before, he had believed that New Yorkers didn\u2019t care about the religious expression and identity of others \u2014 or at least, that they wouldn\u2019t stigmatize people who dressed according to their religious or cultural identity. Now he realized there were limits even to the storied insouciance of New Yorkers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nitasha Siddique had a similar moment of awakening at a much younger age. When she first wore a hijab for the first time to school at around six or seven years old, her elementary<\/span><\/p>\n

It was many years later when she understood their reasons for asking \u2013 they had taken it as a sign that they needed to intervene on a young girl\u2019s behalf. She was spooked; she did not wear the hijab for a long time after.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She started wearing it permanently four years later; in high school, she began to think of hijab politically, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers were surprised that I spoke up,\u201d Nitasha said. She faced the assumption that if she wore a headscarf, she would be quiet, passive, or docile. In high school, she had asked her teacher for a college recommendation. She recalled him writing, \u201cDespite all these things about her family and her culture, she still managed to excel in school.\u201d It was patronizing, even alienating.<\/span><\/p>\n

That alienation is something we can never quite shake off, particularly those of us who are more visibly Muslim \u2013 the kufiyah, the hijab, the skin tone, the name given to us at birth. Kareem Elsaid described being close to his teacher in fourth grade, two years after having moved from Cairo, Egypt to New York; he was the teacher\u2019s pet. \u201cI used to be asked to do everything,\u201d Kareem said.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 9\/11, suddenly, he wasn\u2019t anymore. \u201cHey Kareem, she doesn\u2019t ask you to do anything anymore,\u201d one friend told him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His classmates turned against him. In sixth grade, he was called \u201csand nigger\u201d for the first time. On another occasion, he was playing basketball one afternoon and asked another boy for the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 9:11,\u201d the boy replied. Kareem was called a \u201cterrorist\u201d for the first time, and said he narrowly escaped <\/span>getting cornered or even beaten up<\/span> by the other kids.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe quickest way somebody could shut me down was by saying, \u2018Shut up, you terrorist, or sand n-word, no counterargument to that,\u201d Kareem said, speaking to junior high school. \u201cI\u2019d just get more emotionally riled up, just losing \u2013 just constantly losing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After a few instances of narrowly escaping <\/span>what could have been assault,<\/span> Kareem knew how to walk with his keys in between all his fingers in case a situation were to transpire quickly\u00a0 \u2013 though talking about that today, he smiles and shrugs his shoulders. Some things we just come to terms with and get used to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was the first Muslim they had ever met\u201d\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/h5>\n

\u201cFor a lot of people in my class, I was the first Egyptian they ever knew, the first Muslim they had ever met,\u201d Kareem said.\u201cI just didn\u2019t fit in.\u201d He talked about fitting in with other minorities and people of color in college, and the looks, often aggressive, he got from white New Yorkers. With his full, dark beard, he still encounters hostile glances to this day, but he is used to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kareem\u2019s non-Muslim friends felt free to criticize America\u2019s wars abroad, but he did not ;to the contrary, he felt the need to express caution when talking about the war, to not come off as extremely \u201cunpatriotic\u201d or emotional.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone candidly said [to me], \u2018I think we should just nuke them all,\u2019\u201d Kareem said. If he pushed back, people would question his response in correlation with his Muslim, Middle Eastern identity; he had to be cautious.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt [the caution] made me agree with people I normally would not have agreed with because I was the only one in that group,\u201d he said. There was a risk of being questioned, \u201cWhy are you siding with the terrorist?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to identify as a Muslim\u201d<\/b><\/h5>\n

Sidikha\u2019s younger sister, Hana, was born one year after 9\/11.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to give her a name that doesn\u2019t sound Muslim,\u201d Sidikha said. I related to that conundrum; my own parents followed the same rationale \u2013 a name that could be pronounced, spelled, and not questioned. They pushed the more \u201cIranian-sounding\u201d name to the side \u2013 my middle name is Ariyan\u00a0 \u2013 and gave me an innocuous name that could blend into many faith backgrounds: Sarah.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sidikha recalled her Bronx Science High School sweatshirts, \u201cI remember my parents being like, stop getting your name on the back of those sweaters; people on the street are going to know your name and know you\u2019re Muslim.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In private, at home,\u00a0 her family encouraged spirituality. But Tasnuva Orchi, Sidikha\u2019s close friend and classmate at Bronx Science High school, recalled her father\u2019s word of caution., \u201cHave opinions, he told her, but don\u2019t stand out.\u201d Or, better yet, before attending college, \u201cDon\u2019t make them associate your face with Islam on campus.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in semi-private spaces at Bronx Science during high school, when a small group of Muslim girls, including Tasnuva, would gather to have religious discussions, halaqa \u2013 \u201ca bunch of hijabis in a circle\u201d \u2013 the security guard would tell them that they couldn\u2019t gather in that classroom, any classroom, because it looked suspicious. The student Christian group, however, never faced difficulties holding unscheduled meetings in places. Tasnuva talked about internalizing a fear of being publicly Muslim from a young age, having to \u201cpick and choose\u201d her identity based on whether in that moment she wanted to be perceived as Muslim.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Often times, Muslim Americans of my generation do not want to associate with Islam at all. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand why it was happening to me; I had no impact, wasn\u2019t involved in 9\/11, but I was being treated like the person who had targeted people,\u201d Kareem said. \u201cThat pushed me away from Islam.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we keep going? Where do we keep going?\u201d\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

I asked all the Muslim-American New Yorkers with whom I spoke whether they thought it was harder being a Muslim now, or right after 9\/11.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s easier now because some folks are taking the initiative to learn about the religion and understand it, especially those with a Westernized upbringing, and post-Iraq War,\u201d Kareem said. He pointed out the level of public support for anti-Muslim persecution when the Muslim Ban, President Trump\u2019s 2017 executive order banning entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, went into effect \u2013 a level that would have been inconceivable had the Muslim Ban taken effect in 2002.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Asad also commented on the level of public support today, and how there are many more legal and community services for Muslim Americans, as well as institutional power and government representation, compared to 18 years ago. But still ,in the wider American public, the backlash and bigotry seem about the same, or worse, than immediately after 9\/11, he said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tasnuva felt the bigotry to be worse, especially given her mother wearing hijab. \u201cThis is the first time people on the streets will stop and look at me and my mom,\u201d Tasnuva said. \u201cThat had never happened to me in my entire life in New York, until the last two years. No one would come up to you and say things like, \u2018Get out of America.\u201d She recalled overhearing conversations on the subway, \u201cI remember when this community used to be all Italian, not as Muslim,\u201d or \u201cWe\u2019re finally getting back to the good old days.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nitasha described that point when \u201cyou start becoming numb [to] the way people act towards you, that makes you question whether you belong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an exhaustion,\u201d she said. \u201cOur views are commodified now\u2026 they [non-Muslims] want to represent us, but to what end?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That made me think about Arab and Muslim representation in the media post-9\/11 \u2013 and of Sidikha, and how one positive joke in support of Muslim Americans on Saturday Night Live made her seriously reconsider her place, as a Muslim woman, in Western media.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he said one joke made me realize that there is an outlet to comment, to speak truth to power,\u201d Sidikha said. The environment has changed, but not necessarily improved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c[It\u2019s] not the same survival mode experience that it was post 9\/11. Now, how do we keep going, where do we keep going? That is the bigger question.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, we just keep going forward – Nitasha, toward a career in psychology and clinical research; Asad, toward a Doctorate in Islamic studies, while continuing his community organizing and speaking on New York surveillance and policing; Kareem, toward a Master\u2019s in International Economic Policy to work at the intersection of economic development and the Arab world; Tasnuva, toward a career in data and technology, a field dominated by white men; and Sidikha, toward her dream of becoming a hijabi on the big screen. And I, toward telling our stories.<\/span>