Last week, on Sept. 11, 2021, many people across the United States made a point to recognize the 20th anniversary of the attacks made on The World Trade Center and The Pentagon in 2001. These attacks were made by suicide airline hijackings, which were planned and executed by the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
The recognition that aims to memorialize the almost 3,000 people who were killed on that day typically addresses the effect that was had by American citizens following the tragedy and the eventual War on Terror, which was led by former President George W. Bush. Rarely, however, are people made to contextualize the aftermath of the attacks from a global perspective.
In the months and years following the Sept. 11 attacks, Muslims living in America faced a violence and discrimination that was uniquely their own. In a nation left reeling by pain and destruction, Americans turned on their own neighbors in order to feel as though they had someone to blame. Despite the fact that al-Qaeda is an extremist group and does not represent Islam or its practitioners, Muslims inside and outside of the U.S. were made to bear a cross that was never theirs.
Dictionary.com defines the term “xenophobia” as “an aversion or hostility to, disdain for, or fear of foreigners, people from different cultures or strangers,” or, “fear or dislike of the customs, dress, etc., of people who are culturally different from oneself.”
The need to point fingers, get justice and avenge the lives that were lost on Sept. 11 very immediately became a vehicle for xenophobia and an unspoken pass which allowed people to take their anger and fear out on Muslim people who had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks.
According to an ongoing document published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which lists and details every anti-Muslim attack that has happened since Sept. 11, the first known instance of assault happened the very same day.
In Ronkonkoma, New York, a man held an Arab-American person at gunpoint while continuing to make threats against the person’s culture. He was later charged with a hate crime. Later that day, a man in Eugene, Oregon was also charged with a hate crime after he made threatening phone calls to the Islamic Cultural Center.
Attacks of this nature continued consistently over the days, months and years that followed. The SPLC document shows that mosques across the country were demolished and countless people who even so much as “appeared” to be Muslim were targeted and subjected to an enormous increase in physical and verbal abuse.
Despite the visible and documented upswing in anti-Muslim violence, many choose to ignore the pain felt by an entire culture in exchange for self-proclaimed patriotism, which often takes the shape of only discussing the 9/11 attacks in a vacuum that is exclusive to non-Muslim or Arab-appearing Americans.
“Every time 9/11 rolls around, we tend to put more of a nationalistic spin and it becomes like a nation building activity,” said Dr. Dean Johnson, associate professor and director of Peace & Conflict Studies. “And so it becomes the good of the United States versus the rest of the world.”
On Sept. 9 and 10, West Chester University hosted four separate events which aimed to break this pattern and bring the conversation surrounding being a Muslim person in a post 9/11 world to the forefront.
One of the events, named “Contextualizing 9/11 and Its Aftermath,” took place in Adler Theatre that Thursday at 5 p.m. for students and faculty to attend. The goal of the evening was to discuss the history of Islam and take a look at the relationship that America has with the Middle East as a whole.
The attendees watched the Aljazeera documentary, “The Forever War – The Listening Post,” during the session, which gave them insight into The War on Terror, which the U.S. has spent over $8 trillion on and killed well over 900,000 people, impacting and harming people that were never even involved in the attacks on 9/11.
The session leaders then went on to explain the dichotomy that was created between the “good” Americans and the “uncivilized,” with the “uncivilized” being made up of anyone who speaks Arabic, wears a hijab or can be labeled “Middle Eastern.”
“One panelist described being in a store with her sister. When the cashier heard them speaking Arabic, they started inspecting her money for signs it had been counterfeited. Then when the panelist spoke to them in English, with her American accent, the cashier told her she was fine and stopped inspecting her money,” explained Tesia Wieprecht, a Women’s and Gender Studies student who attended the event. “Another panelist described a scenario where she was waiting for a bus with a woman and her five-/six-year-old daughter in Canada post 9/11; they were chatting very pleasantly until the panelist revealed she was from Pakistan. After hearing that, the little girl became very afraid.”
Though the speakers were able to share their experiences with WCU students, they are only a minuscule sample from a population of people who have been impacted by the bigotry and hatred directed toward Muslim people since Sept. of 2001.
“People wouldn’t be treated differently or made targets because they are assumed to be from what we call the ‘Middle East,’” said Johnson when describing what progress would look like. “They’d be treated based on their humanity…Because if we don’t understand diversity, we’re not going to exist very long together.”
Ali Kochik is a fourth-year English major with minors in Journalism and Women’s & Gender Studies. AK908461@wcupa.edu