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Being a Muslim in America Today |
September
11 was truly a day that will go down in history for years and years to
come. I remember waking up to a television with terrible pictures of the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon enveloped in flames. My first reaction
was “My God! What has happened?” When my mother responded I was in
absolute horror and dismay. To think that some madman would go far enough
to kill so many innocent lives left me dumbfounded. Finally, when I asked
who had done this, I received a gut-wrenching response. My mother told me
that Osama bin Ladin was the prime suspect and from that moment, my heart
sank into my stomach. At first I was speechless because I was completely
overcome with a feeling of disgust and hurt. Then all of sudden it hit me,
bin Ladin was part of the Islamic fanatic group known as the Taliban. He
was a Muslim who claimed to do all of this in the name of God.
Being a Muslim myself and living in America, I realized that life wouldn’t be quite the same as it was before. I could already feel the backlash and the terrible sensation in my stomach intensified. Comparisons were being made to the bombings of Pearl Harbor, and I remembered the Japanese Americans who were taken to the concentration camps even though they were born in America. I felt embarrassed that some lunatic like bin Ladin would claim to do all of the damage in the name of Allah. Bin Ladin made my family and Muslims all over the United States quiver with complete disgust. He was turning the religion of Islam into something that it was not. Americans started associating the religion of Islam with terrorists and assumed that people of the Islamic faith had something to do with the attacks. My family does practice Islam, but we are not fanatics. When I say fanatics I mean that we don’t wear our religion on our sleeve and make outrageous statements in the name of God. The terrorists that claim to be Muslims have absolutely nothing to do with the Islamic Faith. These men have taken Islam to a completely different level causing anti-Islamic sentiments to develop. Islam is a very peaceful religion. The Quran, which is the holy book, states that we all human beings must live together in peace and harmony.
Fortunately
I have been lucky enough not be affected by any of this at school.
However, I have noticed that when I go out, I occasionally get stares and
whispers from people around me and I can’t help but feel uncomfortable.
One doesn’t realize exactly what discrimination is until one experiences
it. The day after the attacks, I asked my mother how work was. She
wasn’t too keen on responding because she hadn’t had a very easy day.
She told me that a lot of her co-workers didn’t talk to her at all. I
will leave her workplace nameless because it was quite a shock to think
that people in such an institution would act in such a manner. What is
hard for a lot of Americans to understand that Muslims born in the United
States carry the exact same sentiments as any other American would. I was
born here, so how could I possibly support such terrible acts made by
these religious madmen? Because of my ethnicity, people automatically
associate me with the terrorists. They don’t realize that their actions
result in feelings of complete embarrassment and pain.