As the world marks the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks in New York City, Muslims from Oxford reflect on how the ‘day that changed the world’ impacted their community, families and lives.
The September 11 attacks, often referred to as 9/11, were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by militant Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda.
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The attacks saw the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the deaths of 2,977 victims and 19 al-Qaeda terrorists.
Councillor Shaista Aziz, cabinet member for inclusive communities at Oxford City Council, feels the legacy of 9/11 is that Muslim communities are thought to be guilty by association and are ‘people to be feared’.
She said: “Every Muslim I knew felt like they were being associated with those individuals and we had to go out of our way to prove we were not like those individuals.
“Their ideologies, their belief systems – they had nothing to do with us.”
Cllr Aziz was in her early twenties at the time of the attacks and was working as a journalist. She recalls ‘very vividly’ returning from her lunch break seeing one of the towers had been hit.
She said: “I walked into the newsroom only a few moments later and the news editor turned around and said ‘Islamic extremists have attacked the World Trade Center’ and by this point the second plane had hit the second tower.
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“I do not believe he did that deliberately or he said those words because I walked in but my heart sunk. I thought ‘ok, this is not an accident, this is an act of terrorism’ and immediately I had a strong idea of what the impact was going to be for people who look like me, our families and our communities.”
Cllr Aziz ‘understood very quickly this was going to cause a lot danger in both America and the UK’ for Muslim communities.
Her fears were realised in the days, weeks and years following the attacks.
On her commute to work, she was aware of people staring at her, giving her ‘aggressive looks’, getting ‘jittery’ when she used public transport and staff searched her bag, whilst few others were asked to have theirs searched.
This did not come as surprise to Cllr Aziz and she felt was being ‘targeted for my identity as a British Muslim’.
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Cllr Aziz added her father was called a ‘Taliban b*****d’ while on his way to the mosque in Oxford a few weeks after 9/11, which ‘shocked’ him after living in the city for many years.
She also recalled incidents where a man tried to punch her at a bus stop in Oxford, a woman attempted to pull her hijab off, she was spat at and called derogatory terms.
Cllr Aziz believes Islamophobia, which has risen as a result of the 9/11 attacks, means young people have grown up in a world where it is ‘the only reference point to their faith, their culture, families’.
She said: “I think that is absolutely shocking and damaging. When anyone of that age is referred to, their entire being is seen through that lens of one horrific terrorist atrocity.”
This is echoed by Ahnaf Farabi and Bilal Qureshi, both 20, who were just months old when the attacks took place.
Mr Qureshi, ex-politics officer for Oxford University Islamic Society and a medical student, feels there is ‘general atmosphere’ which Muslims have to live with nowadays.
He said: “Every time you want to travel aboard or go to the airport you are always on a hyper level of awareness. I can remember about 10 years ago we got stopped and interrogated by the American border force because we had slightly over 100ml of fluid.”
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“Generally speaking, I think we are always a little cautious about how we express our religious identity, such as things like how you dress or even how you keep your hair. Symbols like having a beard or wearing a hijab have become even more polarised during my lifetime.”
Mr Farabi, current president of Oxford University Islamic Society and an engineering student, said he did not really understand what 9/11 was until he was about ten years old.
Growing up, he felt 9/11 was considered quite a taboo topic because it has ‘negative connotations for Muslims’ and so it was not talked about much.
Mr Qureshi feels that since the attacks there has been a shift from racially focused discrimination, such as what his grandparents would have experienced when they moved to the UK from Pakistan, to religious discrimination.
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Mr Farabi explained: “Whenever anything happens in the news the immediate thought is ‘did a Muslim do that?’ and ‘what is their name? Does it sound like a Muslim sounding name?
“Would that happen if 9/11 have not occurred? Possibly not.
“It is the default idea in everyone’s head that whenever an attack occurs, a Muslim did it."
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