This has been a tumulteous week in interfaith relations. A fringe pastor threatened to burn the Quran on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States. The rhetoric in Manhattan escalated around the building of a Muslim community center on the southern part of the island, and now even Donald Trump has inserted himself into the arc of the story. Muslim Americans have decided out of fear to not celebrate the traditional religious festival that falls on today (Eid) because of their fears for their safety.
Perhaps it’s time we spent some time not talking about Muslims but listening to the voices of Muslim Americans and how they are responding and responded to the dreadful events of 9 years ago.
Like Hussein Rashid, a Muslim New Yorker:
September 11, 2001. The day I became Muslim.
That’s a lie. I am now a Muslim. I was not always. America made me Muslim.
I was born into a Muslim family. Like all good children of immigrants, I rebelled. By the time I was 16, I was a firm Marxist, rejecting religion as an opiate of the masses. In college, two things happened: identity politics and a good liberal arts education. In high school, I was me, with all my multi-faceted parts a congruous whole that my friends, whom I had known for years, accepted and understood. In college, I had to choose one part of me to define me. I was being made Muslim. But then I took an Introduction to Islam course, taught by a former Jesuit priest of Syrian descent. Intellectually, I learned more about Islam in that semester than I had up until that point in my life. That’s when I knew I could be Muslim. I became Muslim.
When 9/11 happened, I was a proud Muslim, studying Islam academically. Bin Laden wanted to take that away from me, but I was not going to let him. He did not awaken Islam in me. In fact, had I been weaker in my faith, he would have made me run from it screaming. As a native New Yorker, bin Laden’s actions fueled in me an anger against the injustice he perpetrated. He may want to take credit for making me a defender of Muslims, but it was New York that did that. The city of my birth, the city under attack, was also the city that refused to retreat into cowardice. I have nearly a dozen stories of people who said to me, in either words or deeds, that if you are a New Yorker, it does not matter your faith; come and grieve with us.
I traveled the country giving talks about Muslims after 9/11, but the safest, warmest, and most trusting I ever felt was in New York. That was my country, that was my faith. We do not turn away in ignorance. We do not turn ignorance to fear, and fear into hate.
More here of his story, and of the stories of others.