25 years ago the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the world and took the lives of 2977 people. As we all know, these attacks were carried out by Osama bin Laden, a Muslim al-Qaeda extremist, and with this public knowledge, Western views on Muslims changed for the worse overnight. To a lot of people, they’ve never thought of a Muslim in their lives, or they knew they existed but never really got to know what they’re like, and all of a sudden one kills thousands of people in a terrorist attack. Everyone in the country saw that attack happen live that day; a lot of people got their first impressions of Muslims from these attacks. There’s obviously a bunch of other factors, like people’s already bigoted views on other cultures, but the anti-Muslim sentiment that they were associated with terrorism and explosions spread across the country out of anger and fear.
The simpler the message, the easier it spreads. Muslims were given a negative connotation in the U.S. from that point on, or rather a worse connotation than before. This negative connotation unfortunately still affects Muslims today since such a simple sentiment sticks with people, as 9/11 remains one of the only large-scale terrorist attacks on the United States to this day.
During the aftermath of the attacks, people of Middle Eastern descent, among many others, were harassed countrywide as people with no concept of nuance took 9/11 as a personal attack that every Middle Eastern person took on them.
People were extremely hostile towards Sikh-Americans and many other people, like Balbir Singh Sodhi, who was murdered on September 15th, 2001, due to discrimination from post-9/11 sentiment. People acting like it was righteous to hate Middle Eastern folks because they were all magically in on one group’s terrorist attack.
The families of 9/11 victims created a petition with over 100,000 signatures to keep New York City Mayor Mamdani from attending the 9/11 memorial event happening today. Mamdani was eight years old at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; he had nothing to do with them. People just wanted him away from the memorial because he’s a Muslim.
It’s unfortunate to see this Islamophobia born out of bigotry, as people found these attacks an excuse to feel patriotic in hating anyone that doesn’t share their views or looks. It’s going to take a long time for this sentiment to go away, but now that everyone’s had time to process the attack, lots of people have a better idea that it was radical extremists and not every single Muslim.
