Today's Twenty-somethings in America: Muslims Are Not All Terrorists

By Yuting Lu

Even though 12 years have passed, the 9/11 tragedy, still affects young people in a negative way all over the world. Today's Twenty-somethings, especially those from Muslim countries, who were still children at that time, barely can remember any details of the tragedy but still suffer from its aftermath till today.

Juliana Repice, who lost her cousin in 9/11 when she was 9 years old, still fears of the sound of planes flying past.

“Every once in a while if a plane is going by, like kind of low, and it’s loud, I look at it and think…sometimes the feeling is still there,” she said.

She was a fourth-grade student in the elementary school that year, and she was in a class when the attacks occurred. All she can remember from that day is that everyone in her class got dismissed immediately. And on the next day she received the terrible news of her cousin’s death, seeing her family in deep grief. That was the first time she heard of the word “Muslim”.

Similarly, most of the other twenty-somethings didn’t know the word “Muslim” until September 11, 2001. However, another word -- “terrorism”-- has been attached to it since the moment they first heard the word “Muslim” from the television.

Ms. Suleyman was a sophomore in high school 12 years ago. As a child of Muslim immigrants, she had never felt different until her peers started talking about “all Muslims as terrorists” after the attacks, she told the New York Times in 2011. She was born and grew up in the United States. Her family are all Muslim but none of them agrees that violence is justified in name of Islam. Nonetheless, some of her relatives still have been treated unfairly after 9/11, she said. They have been declined for jobs or harassed at the supermarket.

Islam is the second-largest as well as one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, reported by FastestGrowingReligion.com. It has about 1.6 billion followers, almost a quarter of earth’s population. The religion is also growing in the United States specifically. In 2009, more than 115,000 Muslims became legal residents of the United States, according to the Pew Research Center in 2011. However, the fast increasing number of followers hasn’t stopped Muslims in their twenties from being mistreated.

Feras Ahmed, 25, originally from Yemen, where 99% of the citizens are Muslims, has been profiled every time at the airport only because of his name. “It really pisses me off and I think it’s not fair.” Ahmed said.

Maria Nuez from Honduras, who even is not a Muslim but is of Arab descent, has similar experiences. Twelve years earlier, she was only eight years old.

“After 9/11 people started to look at us strangely in restaurants because of my family's descent,” Nuez said.

But her family in fact is Catholic. Islam is not a common religion among Arabic-Hondurans. 

As a Muslim, Chanma Benjelloun, 19, an international student from Morocco, also fears of being misunderstood as the U.S. media continues to link al-Qaeda with Muslims, “You know, they [Americans] are afraid of terrorism. We knew it [the gap] was going to be harder and wider.”