By K.D. Norris
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.”
