After the 9/11 incident, every Muslim in America was scrutinized. Just being a Muslim made you a proper terrorist suspect. Life for a Muslim after that incident was one of extreme turmoil.
I remember an incident in 2002 when my family and I came to visit US and how our immigration took much longer than everyone else. It went to a point where the immigration officer after learning my father's first name was Mohammed took us to Homeland Security. This went on for hours before the officer declared us okay to leave.My relatives who lived in the states also suffered from a lot of scrutiny at every aspect of their daily lives. It came to a point that one of my cousins simply gave up and changed his first name Mohammed.
This was what life had become. If your skin was brown, you were questioned about religious views. If you were Muslim, you viewed as high-risk individual.
The truth is that the 9/11 incident was extremely tragic where aside from others many Muslims also lost their lives. However, it was mainly the Muslims that were blamed for its happening. The Muslims were made to suffer because our freedom of speech in this nation had expired. It was not right and we still never received a proper apology for it. It's time we got one for what we had suffered through. It's about time!
Because my father is Muslim and his name is also Mohammed, he has had to suffer through the scrutiny of airports and the usual stereotypes too. After the 9/11 incident, he took a one way trip on an airport with little luggage because he was going to pick up a car in another state and drive it back to Texas the same day (which to paranoid officers looks suspicious) and he was strip searched and told directly that he had no rights. Obviously people go crazy and discriminate others after something bad happens to the whole country, just like the Japanese after WWI and Zeitoun during Hurricane Katrina. It is embarrassing for such a powerful country to lose its ability to protect human rights.
ReplyDeleteIt is just atrocious for a whole group of people to scrutinized for someone else's fault. Especially being Muslim, this matter is highly personal to me but mostly due to my strong belief against discrimination. Who gave anyone the write to discriminate? When you discriminate don't you claim to be better than the rest? Does one sector of a race lose more credibility when someone from the same race does something bad? Are human rights variable? How does someone's rights get so easily taken away when someone wants to?
ReplyDeleteIt is embarrassing that America, the most powerful country in the world, can't seem to act fair at all times. Frankly, it allows the nation to lose credibility.