September 11th, 2001 was a historical date that marked a new era in United States of America history. On this day, four commercial airplanes were hijacked, and two of these planes collided in the twin towers of the world trade center in New York City. This attack was coordinated by the extremist islamic organization Al-Qaeda, commanded by Osama Bin Laden.
Moment of the tragedy when the planes hit the twin towers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57698668
Protest of muslims in the U.S.
https://www.cfr.org/article/us-muslims-and-turbulent-post-911-world
Consequences of the Twin Towers attack affected people in many ways, such as racial and religious discrimination, loosing relatives, families, friends, people got affected by this tragic event. But a specific group was targeted: the muslims. After 09/11 they got stereotyped as terrorists, because people relate them to the 9/11 attack because in the islamic religion, we can identify a person with more facility, and this evolved to American people being explicitly discriminating against muslim people going as far to verbal and physical abuse.
The book nine, ten: a September 11 story by Nora Raleigh Baskin follows the story of three young adults: Aimee, Naheed and Sergio. They’re selected for a math competition in NYC, because of their excellent grades at school and an interesting element is that they practice different religions. Naheed, a Muslim girl, gets stereotyped just because of her veil. People usually asked questions such as: “Can you belly dance?”, “Do you really not eat for a month?” or even “Do you have hair?”. Right after the 09/11 attack, the stereotypes started getting more offensive, people calling her a terrorist, and blaming her for the attack just because of her religion. This portrays how religious discrimination increased after the attack.
Towers falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes portrays a girl and her views on 9/11, a traumatic event affecting a lot of Americans at the same time affecting Muslim people by getting targeted because of their religion. Deja the main character thinks that 09/11 is not an important event because it was in the past, but is that true? This lets the readers think if 9/11 was an important event. The majority of people would say yes because even after 20 years it is still taught and learned, this can be seen in page 45 of the book where it states “9/11 is something that should never get forgotten”. The point of view of Deja is completely different she thinks just because it’s in the past she shouldn’t care about it, this can be seen on page 55 stating “Why should i learn about 9/11 if it was in the past ”, this could be the effect of how deja was raised because she was raised in poverty in Brooklyn where this subject was almost never talked about.
In this story the main character and two minor characters have different perspectives about the event on 9/11: Deja doesn’t really care about this tragic event, whereas Ben and Sabeen think that it should be taught and respected everywhere. Both points of view reflect how they were raised and taught by their families.
The book A long way from home by Alice Walsh tells a story of a thirteen-year-old Muslim girl called Rabia who use to live in Afghanistan but, after many tragedies in her life, is moving with her mother and her little brother to New York to escape the brutal Taliban. Coincidentally, this move happened in the morning of September 11. When their plane was almost landing in New York, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City happens and Rabia’s plane is forced to change course to Gander in Newfoundland in Canada. In the plane there is an American boy called Colin, who is discriminate with Rabia and her family just because they are muslims because the terrorist group are islamic extremists. Islamic extremists are those who do not tolerate and accept the religion and/or culture of others.
Everybody associates muslim people with the terrorist attack just because of the religion even though they have nothing related to it or the islamic extremism.
Unfortunate as it is, this was not the first time Rabia and her family faced discrimination. The book narrates the many tragedies Rabia has to deal with. Besides the prejudice on the way to the United States of America, when she still lived in Afghanistan, she lost one of her feet, her father got in jail, her oldest brother was killed and her middle brother was sent away. The loss of her brothers deeply impacts Rabia’s life and she has trouble accepting their deaths. Every time she sees someone that looks like them, she starts remembering them, always when she remembers them, she gets sad and starts to remember her life with her brothers, which was very good. For example, at the beginning of the story in page 2 “A steward stood in the aisle, smiling at Raia. With his dark skin and even white teeth, he reminded her of Amir” and Rabia also has difficulty walking because of her prosthetic leg and the burqa that covers her whole body, Rabia hates wearing and feels emprisoned when wearing the burqa “It had been six months since she’d started wearing the burqa. She hated it it. Peering through the mesh of tiny holes across the front was like looking through the bars of a prison” page 5 in paragraph 8 , but unfortunately she is obligated to wear it because of her religion. Until today, muslim girls suffer more prejudice precisely because they are easy recognized by all the people who look at them because of the burqa, which is a typical outfit that every muslim girl has to wear. .
After 9/11, American citizens met the Muslim people with violent acts such as physical and verbal aggression. an article from Guardian talks about a 13 year-old girl and the struggles she went through being a Muslim girl in the United states of America a week after 9/11. It all started when she just transferred to a Islamic boarding school in Buffalo, she was coming back to New York for ramadan break,and as she entered the plane everyone gave her looks of hatred, but that wasn’t the only part of discrimination faced, during airport security she had to do extra screenings, have her bag checked and she even got pulled to the side. She said “I’ve never had racism directed toward me before”.
Adama Bah, 23, student that suffered the discrimination.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/02/after-9-11-muslim-arab-american-stories
9/11 affected lots of groups, but especially the muslims, because when we see someone with muslim characteristics (veil, burqa, or even the big nose) people uses this as an indicator for terrorism and automatically think about 9/11. But remember to be aware of your actions. This discrimination has to change, and it’s up to you to make that change in the world.
