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We have heard of the children of 9/11. We know exactly to whom that refers. They are the youth who lost mothers and fathers in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Some were babies, others not yet even born. We wonder what happened to them, and how they grew up. Yet, there is also another group of children who group up during 9/11 that few talk about. They are the Muslim youth who grew up during the age of the "war on terror."
In my previous blog post, I wrote of the resurgence of Islamophobic sentiment that occurred upon 9/11. Hate crime and violence directed at those who were Muslim or perceived to be Muslim increased exponentially, with some of the statistics found here. While a small handful of studies examined the experiences of Muslims post 9/11, they largely focused on adults. But what about the youth? What happened to the children who went to elementary school and junior high at a time when being Muslim was associated with being scary or dangerous? Would they even openly identify with being Muslim? How were they treated? While my dissertation project focused on a number of issues that the young Muslim American population faced, I present here one of the most relevant models I found that illustrates the experience and reactions of youth post 9/11.
The study I conducted was a qualitative investigation using grounded theory analysis. Participants were drawn from across the nation and represented a variety of U.S. regions ranging from the West Coast to the Midwest, Southeast, and East Coast, including a few participants from New York. They were anywhere from 9 years old to 19 when 9/11 occurred. Data gathered from written and oral interviews provided much insight into the complex nature of their experiences. One female participant who was a New York native reported:
"There was an immediate sense of fear amongst my parents, my aunts, my uncles, all our relatives, our family friends... And I just gathered from what everyone else is saying that this is going to be an issue and people were genuinely scared...Just at that point to hear something on the news, where it's like, I don't even know how many it was, 18 Muslims have hijacked the plane...just to hear that, then that point on to hear Muslims on TV, and then it hasn't stopped since. And the idea of terrorist attacks, I could understand without anyone telling me. I could understand that this was going to leave a specific or certain kind of image on people's minds. That made me scared....It made me scared because I was worried about the way that people would start to perceive Muslims, and how they would start to associate Muslims and these kinds of things. And of course we were worried about other things too. I remember worrying about my parents losing their jobs, or being the victims of potential violence or things like that."
The sense that things would be different appeared to be certainly correct. Several students encountered many negative experiences in the years to follow. A male participant reported:
"So I got into a lot of fights...kind of after school waiting for a ride type deal, and it was usually like a gang, three or four people. Not too bad, I was like a really chubby kid, so it was like fine. Our cars got smashed all the time, sometimes with bats and stuff, baseball bats. A couple of teachers somehow, I don't know, I said I was Muslim or something, like it came about in some weird way, and they're like ‘oh, you're lucky I didn't bring my gun or something...like that someone said that you're lucky I didn't bring my rifle.'"
This goes to show how deeply ingrained this idea of Muslims as the enemy has become. That students and teachers would taunt young Muslims is certainly disturbing. And while in my study I found that many youth identified strongly with being Muslim despite the stigma associated, this in no way minimized their struggles. One male participant recalled about the reason for being bullied:
"It was definitely because I was Muslim. That's like what it was. It was like, ‘hey sand n*****' and then it'd like start. Or like I play a lot of basketball and everyone said I looked like Osama...So just like it started from ‘hey n*****' to like ‘sand n*****' and people would just call me Sandy. Like Osama, but it was definitely because I was Muslim. Because I wouldn't say that I wasn't."
While it would be hoped that such verbal abuse would cease at the childhood level, this was not the case. Several students reported negative comments made to them during college. One student reported:
"I was just like writing my name in Urdu and so someone said, ‘hey, we don't need terrorists here'."
Another recalled an incident about a friend, stating:
"I mean, I'm sure there are people here who wouldn't like me because I am Muslim. Because like my friend, ‘Abdul,' he said that there was one kid that he used to play basketball with here, and he found out that he was Muslim, and he said, ‘Hey, I can't play with you anymore.' So I like never had that personally...it's that I associate with people who just happen to be more educated, the more learned people. They can tell the difference between what is Islam in the news and what is actual Islam."
Interestingly, many of the participants showed much resiliency in the face of such discriminatory experiences. Yet unfortunately, such challenges were at the crux of many students' challenges. The model found below summarizes the main findings of one portion of my study.
This model represents the experience of our participants after 9/11 occurred. A major theme that nearly all participants discussed was discrimination, whether it was personal, or related to their family. There were a number of negative repercussions. These included but were not limited to a sense of fear and concern. This was often manifested by concern for the welfare of family members, or fear about what could happen to them if they confronted authorities (i.e., at the airport during screenings).
Additionally, many reported to frustrations with inaccurate media portrayals of Muslims. Many also reported to discriminatory actions that were often significant in nature (i.e., racial slurs) but did not appear to give credence to their meaning, which represents the notion of minimizing discriminatory actions. This could have been related though, to the host of positive coping strategies which our participants overwhelmingly discussed.
Some took to correcting misconceptions of others through involvement in campus organizations, or personal interactions. Others responded peacefully, and showed great resiliency despite what they experienced. And many found strength in their cultural and religious roots; this often related to a strong social support network. This combination of factors appeared to minimize the potentially harmful effects of discriminatory actions, as our participants did not appear to have suffered major negative consequences or mental health distress as a result of 9/11.
Further, the model illustrates the intensification of Islamophobic sentiment upon the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While the above model and results illuminate the very tip of the iceberg, they indicate the significant reverberations of 9/11 for the young Muslim American community. Nearly every male student I surveyed had what our research team came to term "an airport story" that ranged from additional "random" screenings to being blacklisted. What is perhaps most disheartening about this is sitting before these individuals during the interview phase of my study, and seeing that they are just students. And in their faces one still sees the traces of childhood innocence and the barriers they have overcome with a quiet wisdom. To think that these are the faces of terrorists.
