There has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan, you're looking at the World
Trade Center, we understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
We don't know anything more than that.
I remember being in my room and my father came and
asked me to come out to the living room.
I remember I had a math class early that morning and I was in school.
I was teaching in the state of Texas.
I was a pulmonary critical care fellow at the time.
All I could remember is that there were two buildings.
One of them looked like there was a fire in it.
I said: kids, we have a serious event that I
want all of us to watch and to try to process together.
And then I saw the second plane hit.
So my kids were obviously crying some had their heads on the desks, others were praying their way.
And when I walk outside the building I see everybody is staring towards the World
Trade Center and I'm very nervous, I don't quite understand what's happening.
Like maybe this is like war, maybe this is the end of the world, you know? So I need to get to my family.
They allowed us to go down to the World Trade Center site and
we asked them like, what can we do, how can we help?
And they said that well,
if you can do eye exams on the workers who were there, you could come and help.
These national guards, they were like 18 years old, 19 year olds.
They would come in and we would tell them, like, listen you can't go back, you're
actually burning the corneas from the fire, the flames but they're no, they're like no,
I can't, I have to go in, I have to find, you know, my friends are in there.
I still have to wrestle with this, this idea of Muslims committing acts of mass murder and saying
this is Islamic because I have kids, I'm teaching them about Islam right now.
My parents taught me.
A lot of what happened after 9/11 was to drag Islam into this, to make it about,
does Islam need a reformation? Does Islam need to be modernized?
I had to wrestle with a lot of
that and try and understand how much of this is religion, how much is this culture, how much this
is politics, how much is his faith.
I felt sort of angry.
This sense that they had taken my religion
and sort of sabotaged it, realizing that Islam is not that,
it's so not about violence and then the fact that everybody believed that made me even more upset.
After what happened with all the World Trade Center, I understand a lot of New Yorkers was
hostile towards the Muslims because they felt like, you know, they had everything to do with it.
Me myself personally, I witnessed a lady chasing another lady, a Muslim lady with her babies,
you know, trying to do something negative towards her because she felt as though she didn't do it
but she had something to do with it.
I wasn't like not privy to Islamophobia before that but I didn't realize
how quick it was going to grow.
The one bully moment that I had was picture day because
I always wore a khimar which is like a form of hijab, right?
This boy, I will not say his name,
pull my khimar off.
I always hated that, I always felt abused and I don't remember him
being disciplined, I just remember it being like an isolated incident that I dealt with and had
to deal with on my own.
I was not somebody who completely hid my identity, I still was who I was,
I just didn't talk about my faith very clearly, very openly.
I was very, very, very cautious.
I was almost assumed that if we talk about God that our God is some very dark chaotic God.
Of course there's those patients who are going to question you, are going to be like, oh,
I don't want to see you because you're Muslim or whatever and it makes you, at
those moments, realize that you're truly not accepted, you're truly not considered to be,
you know, American.
As a public figure, you end up being a lightning rod.
You either get seen as you
say as the ambassador or the spokesperson, the guy is going on TV to say what needs to be said and
fight the fights in Oxford union or you're the guy who is the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrator
of the US/UK media, you know, Bin Laden in a suit and tie and a smile, I remember somebody once attacked me as.
1.6 billion people in every corner of the world, a quarter of humanity of
all backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities and yet the opposition tonight wants to generalize,
stereotype, smear in order to desperately win this debate.
I don't remember
seeing very many Muslims or, like, 'the Muslim portrayal' on TV before that but definitely
after that there was an uptick in like the narrative being like terrorist attacks, the number
one enemy for America are Muslims, you know?
I didn't like the way Muslims were depicted,
it was as if all Muslims are the same.
Muslims come from different backgrounds.
They're from different geographical locations, speak different languages, different colors ...
Muslims do not have thicker skins than everyone else.
We're not born with a natural ability
to just with withstand non-stop criticism and questioning and accusations and smears.
I don't think we've quite really had that conversation about what happened to Muslims
over the last 20 years.
Muslims living in the west, your Muslim neighbor, your Muslim, you know,
news agent owner or grocery store owner or gas station owner, your Muslim doctor ...
I don't think we've had that conversation either as a country, as muslim communities ...
The toll has been huge.
I did realize that if I didn't learn Islam, I could be victim of a lot of the doubts that existed
towards Islam in those days.
The way to leave doubt and gain certainty is by gaining knowledge.
In terms of my faith and what I believe, I think that's such a personal thing, I don't think that
anybody can potentially impact that, not for me.
I mean, that's something that I believe and it's a
one-on-one relationship with God.
Dealing with this over the years actually gave me a firmer grasp on
my faith because it made me have to do the digging and do the soul searching and do the researching
and do have the difficult conversations with a lot of people.
I felt like it was really important to
make my identity clear and identify as a black Muslim woman and
it's in everything that I do, I don't hesitate, I'm so proud of it
and now I have like so many more Muslims in my life than I had as a kid.
I want my children, future children generations to feel that they are as American as anyone else, that they have the
joy of saying, I'm American but I happen to have a dual identity as well.
To walk in faith but also
walk in confidence of who they are.
The diversity we find in the Muslim community becomes
the diversity we find in the American community and we just have to get to know each other and not use
images that will separate us as if we're not here, you know, all part of the same society.