Hamza Khan, one of several local Muslim American young persons who WKTV interviewed as it prepared for its series of video interviews “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”, is in many ways an archetypal American success story in the making.
His family is of Pakistani heritage, but he was born in West Michigan after his parents immigrated more than 20 years ago. He was raised and attended high school locally and is currently a Michigan State University student, studying neuroscience.
And, as we learned when he agreed to host a short documentary based on the series of WKTV Voices interviews, he is poised to be a success in his chosen education/career field but also possesses a modern youth’s sense of humor.
When, during the filming of his documentary segments, a WKTV staff member commented that he was “very good” on camera — his quick retort was … “Well, if this neuroscience thing does not work out.”
During the past several months, preparing for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, WKTV has been interviewing local Muslim Americans — from university professors, to local Islamic religious leaders, to immigrant and American-born citizens, including young people such as Khan.
WKTV’s goal was to let them tell their own stories.
This short documentary is a synthesis of those interviews.
For the complete WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 interviews, visit WKTVvideos on YouTube.
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org.
Continuing the WKTV Journal In Focus series “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”, Hamid Elmorabeti, who was born and raised Morocco, leads a classic American immigrant family.
He and his family live in a quiet neighborhood in Kentwood where everybody had great lawns and kids ride their bikes. After first operating a trucking company with his family, he now works in truck maintenance. His wife, Mirsada, also works locally, and their son, Marwin, attends Kentwood Pubic Schools.
In our interview, Elmorabeti talks about his and his family’s journey to West Michigan and American citizenship, about that fateful 9/11 day 20 years ago when his wife advised him to not leave the house, and about how things have gotten better for local Muslims as that tragic day has become more history than nightly news.
The Kentwood family of Hamid Elmorabeti, at home prayer during COVID-19 mosque closure. (Courtesy of Elmorabeti Family)
But Elmorabeti, who has deep roots in the community — decades-long roots, admits he often still feels like an outsider.
“Yes, sometimes I do,” Elmorabeti said in the interview. “Society, they choose how they look at us. We try as hard as we can to fit in. But sometimes it is really hard. I remember one time I was driving a truck … ”
This special WKTV Voices project presents video interviews, and online/print stories, covering a range of personal stories of the 9/11 attacks and their impact over the following two decades.
Following previous background interviews dealing with American Islamic history and global politics, we now present the voices of Muslim community leaders and, most importantly, local Muslim American citizens, especially young people who grew up in the age of 9/11.
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). All individual interviews are also available on YouTube at WKTVvideos. Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org. You can also search Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the Hashtag #voices9/11at20.
Continuing WKTV Journal’s series “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”, a modern American family working hard to attain the American Dream — who just happen to be Muslim.
Aamir and Halima Ismail are residents of Kentwood and members of Islamic Center of West Michigan. Aamir works as manager of financial systems for Amway and Halima works as a school improvement administrator for Grand Rapids Public Schools. The couple have two children, teenage boys Ibrahim and Da’ud , both of whom attend Kentwood Public Schools.
This special WKTV Voices project presents video interviews, and online/print stories, covering a range of personal stories of the 9/11 attacks and their impact over the following two decades. Following previous background interviews dealing with American Islamic history, global politics, and the current Islamic world, we present the voices of Muslim community leaders and, most importantly, local Muslim American citizens, especially young people who grew up in the age of 9/11. (If you have a story to tell us, contact Ken@wktv.org.)
The Ismails — she was born in the United States while he emigrated from Pakistan — have worked hard and prospered in West Michigan. They love the diversity of students in Kentwood Public Schools and live here partially due to that diversity.
But it does not mean they haven’t had to have “that talk” with their sons, a talk to prepare them in case they face any discrimination or other forms of bias.
“I think we have had to explain to them that there are matters of the faith and what they do represents the faith, and so I think we have used that to our benefit to help them see what they do is a representation of the faith, ” Halima Ismail said in the interview. “They haven’t necessarily come to us with instances of hostility but they have been encouraged to explain their faith, have been interested in sharing that information with their school and in their classes.
“But we do feel that, as parents, we have had to sit down (with them) and say ‘If you feel bullied, if this happens, if you are in the hostile environment, to walk away and speak to an adult.’ That is something, we have had those conversations.”
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). All individual interviews are also available on YouTube at WKTVvideos. Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org. You can also search Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the Hashtag #voices9/11at20.
Aamir and Halima Ismail on the set of WKTV Journal In Focus June 2021. (WKTV)
Loie Ghannam, Mohamed Abdirahamn and Hamza Khan (from right with series writer/producer Ken Norris at far right) discuss growing up as Muslim Americans in the age of 9/11. (WKTV)
Loie Ghannam, Hamza Khan, Mohamed Abdirahamn and Mohamed Dahir — “there are a lot of Mohameds” in Muslim American society, you might be humorously told — are similar in many ways.
They are all currently college kids, they all have that certain style and vocabulary of American Gen Zers, and they are all not afraid to tell you what they think.
But the four are also “Brothers in Islam”, Muslim Americans who balance their deeply historic religion with their rightful place in modern American society, brothers who have grown up in the two decades since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on their country …
… brothers who have experienced the same misconceptions about their culture and their religion … experienced the same subtle if not blatant discrimination, as children and now as young men … brothers who, none-the-less, are working to thrive in today’s high tech economy and West Michigan community.
And while from different cultural backgrounds, their common experiences as youth brought them tougher.
“All our parents are of the same group, you know, we all kind of just got here, we’re trying to learn the language, trying to start a family here. So we quickly bonded,” Abdirahaman said during an early, informal discussion at the WKTV studios in May as part if the WKTV Voices 9/11 at 20 project. “Why we are good, close friends is that we grew up in America, but also shared our religion, our culture. We go to school together but we also go to prayer five times a day. We get together.”
Abdirahaman is a Grand Valley State University student, majoring in engineering. His family is of Somali heritage, and he came to America at age 2 when parents immigrated nearly 20 years ago.
Khan is a Michigan State University student, studying neuroscience. His family is of Pakistani heritage, but he was born in America after his parents immigrated more than 20 years ago.
Dahir is a Grand Rapids Community College student, studying information technology. His family is of Somali heritage, but he was born in Nairobi, Kenya, where his parents fled as they worked to immigrate to America, which occurred in 2004.
Ghannam is also Grand Valley State University student, studying supply chain management. While his family is of Palestinian heritage, he too was born in Grand Rapids after his parents immigrated to American 25 years ago.
Despite their common religious beliefs, their working for the American Dream like any other young person, the four had different and highly personal stories to tell when it came to how they first learned what happened on 9/11, how they react to people who out of ignorance or malice grouped the terrorists and every other Muslim together, and how they deal with that Islamophobia.
Biased representation and its consequences
“9/11 has impacted all of us in some way,” Dahir said. “What’s big for us, as Muslims, is (lack of) representation. There is not as many Muslims, here in the United States, as other parts of the world. For us, representation is key. Especially in the media, you know.
“9/11 has really impacted the media. If you ever go on and see a TV show … and you see any representation of Islam, it always has to do with something about terrorists. You know. … So many people watch that thing and have that exact representation of what the religion is like. … Some people are not around Muslims and they use that media to represent us.”
And that uninformed stereotyping has real world consequences — “I like to travel, I love traveling,” Dahir said. “But it is like at the TSA (airport security) at Grand Rapids, in the TSA lines. It’s like — ‘Oh, snap!’ — here comes another major check for us. Everybody else gets to go through but the guy named Mohamed has to stay back and answer some more questions.”
Islam is more than one country, region
“Other races, other ethnicities, face bias as well — but for us, there is an ‘X, Y, Z people all look the same’ (bias), but our countries could be thousands of miles apart,” Khan said.
“What bothers me, specifically in my case, is that if you take a look at our faith, at the countries where our faith is the religious majority. … You have African countries where Islam is the majority. You have Arab countries where Islam is the majority. You have Asian countries where Islam is the majority. Yet for some reason people lump us together.”
And that lumping together of people impacts Muslims of widely diverse background who share a religion but little more, yet also share being somehow tied to 9/11.
“Our religion is something within our hearts, something that we practice in private,” he said. “Yet being a Muslim, for some, puts a bull’s eye on our back. … It is something that we deal with.”
Similar lessons, different reactions to 9/11 questions
Learning how to answer questions about the September 2001 attacks, how to react to the sometimes uninformed opinions, is something that each of the four brothers had to deal with — each in their own way.
“That is something we all have to kind of grow up with, figure out how to overcome,” Abdirahaman said. “I started hearing about (the 9/11 attacks), I didn’t know anything about it until I was like seven or eight years old. I started hearing about it and the jokes were coming, and all that stuff. And people were like … ‘What do you think about it?’
“For a long time I did not know the right answer. All I could say was ‘Of course it’s wrong, it’s bad. You can’t kill people.’ To this day, that is still the right answer. But at the same time it is like … Why is it my responsibility to say ‘That is bad’? It is those people (the terrorists) who should be accountable.
“What happened (on that day) was it put Muslims in a box. It put Islam in a box. It put the Arabic culture, language, all that stuff, in the box too. It was all the stereotypes, you put that into the box …. but Islam is more than just that. The whole meaning of Islam is peace.”
For Ghannam — whose Palestinian heritage includes struggles for a homeland that both predates 2001 and continues in current news — dealing with being a Muslim in the age of 9/11 was a lesson learned young.
“For me personally it started at a really young age, I remember going all the way back to kindergarten,” Ghannam said. “My parents would sit me down and say ‘You know, when somebody brings this up to you you always say “No. This is a religion of peace.”.’ That is the key catch phrase.
“It even got to a point where, you know, without me even knowing, I was speaking against my own religion just for the approval of the person in front of me. … But as I grew older, it wasn’t until recently, that I, like, think back to that situation and … think if they choose not to accept me, that’s on them.”
Continuing WKTV Journal’s series “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”, Imam Dr. Sharif Sahibzada, the spiritual leader and director of the Islamic Center of West Michigan, the first mosque and Islamic center in West Michigan, dating from 1985.
He has a wide-ranging perspective on the local Muslim American community as his mosque has often been the local landing point for Muslim immigrants from all over the world. But he also has a unique experience associated with the September 2001 attacks on America as he arrived just months before that terrible day.
However, his strongest memory is not one of the bias he and his fellow local Muslims faced in the immediate aftermath, but the support he and they received.
Imam Dr. Sharif Sahibzada (WKTV)
“Overall, and in general, our host community, the Christians, they welcomed us, spoke with us,” Dr. Sahibzada said on the set of the WKTV interview. “There was one example at that time, there was one church, on Kalamazoo and 36th Street … they invited our whole community over for a dinner.”
This special WKTV Voices project presents video interviews, and online/print stories, covering a range of personal stories of the 9/11 attacks and their impact over the following two decades. After initial background interviews dealing with American Islamic history, global politics, and the current Islamic world, we will present the voices of Muslim community leaders and, most importantly, local Muslim American citizens, especially young people who grew up in the age of 9/11.
Among the topics Dr. Sahibzada discussed was the history of his mosque and Islamic center, his journey here to West Michigan and his Kashmirian background, and how the local Muslim American community is not just immigrants from the Middle East but of such diverse backgrounds as Bosnian and Somalian.
He also talks about his deep belief that God brought him to this place and this time 20 years ago, and brought him here for a reason.
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). All individual interviews are also available on YouTube at WKTVvideos. Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org. You can also search the web with the Hashtag #voices911at20.
Continuing WKTV Journal’s series “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”, Grand Valley State University professor Dr. Gamal Gasim visited the studios to give some background on Muslin American culture and politics in the two decades since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Among several topics discussed was the current increase, if still small, influence of Muslim American political power.
“Like many other minorities who were subject before to discrimination in this country, from African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Irish-Americans … other ethno-religious groups, Muslim Americans felt that in order for them to protect their civil rights, and to advance their own causes, they needed to engage politically, throughout the political process,” Gasim said.
(An “ethno-religious group” is defined as an ethnic group whose members are also unified by a common religious background.)
This special WKTV Voices project presents video interviews, and online/print stories, covering a range of personal stories of the 9/11 attacks and their impact over the following two decades. After initial background interviews dealing with American Islamic history, global politics, and the current Islamic world, we will present the voices of Muslim community leaders and, most importantly, local Muslim American citizens, especially young people who grew up in the age of 9/11.
Dr. Gasim’s field of study is comparative politics and Middle Eastern Politics. WKTV first met Dr. Gasim when lectured at the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan on the subject of the Arabian Peninsula country of Yemen, and he has written or contributed to many scholarly works, as well as articles for the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera and the Arab Daily News. He has also extensively studied and written on the subject of Muslim American culture and politics.
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). All individual interviews are also available on YouTube at WKTVvideos. Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org.
WKTV Journal recently welcomed into our studio Grand Valley State University professor Dr. Abdullah F. Alrebh for the premier episode of “WKTV Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later”.
This special WKTV Voices project will present video interviews, and online/print stories, covering a range of personal stories of the 9/11 attacks and their impact over the following two decades. After initial background interviews dealing with American Islamic history, global politics, and the current Islamic world, we will present the voices of local Muslim community leaders and, finally, Muslim American citizens, especially young people who grew up in the age of 9/11.
Dr. Alrebh’s field of study is in Sociology of Religion and Sociological Theory, and he has published a number of academic articles and essays focusing on religion, the Middle East and its social movements, and education.
He is also very knowledgeable about the Arabian Peninsula region and specifically Saudi Arabia — a country forever linked to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the plan’s leader, Osama bin Laden, who was the initial leader of the pan-Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda, was a Saudi.
WKTV Journal’s “Voices: 9/11 at 20 — Our Islamic neighbors 20 years later” airs on cable television in the Wyoming and Kentwood areas on Comcast WKTV Channel 26 and on AT&T Channel 99 Government channel (For dates and times on Channel 26, see our Weekly On-air Schedule. For dates and times on Channel 99, visit here). All individual interviews are also available on YouTube at WKTVvideos. Online/print stories are available by searching “9/11 at 20” on WKTVJournal.org.
