WREN Stories: Growing up as a Muslim after 9/11

This month’s WREN (Workforce Race Equality Network) Stories blog comes from Dr Huma Khan, a Core Psychiatry Trainee currently working with the Intensive Support Service based in the East of Leeds.

Tuesday 11 September 2001. This date is etched in the memories of people across the world. It is associated with grief, loss, and anger. Some losses have been more than others. Unimaginably so. A lot has been said of this date, the sequence of events following it and most certainly, about its aftermath.

My brother, then aged 11 years and I, at 12 years came back from school on this date to find my mother silently staring at the flashing images of the World Trade Centre on our television screen. I do not think anybody who witnessed that day has been untouched or unaffected by it. Everyone has had consequences. So, when the proposed actions regarding Afghanistan were announced and the subsequent events unfolded, I found myself numb as I tried to find clarity in my thoughts and emotions.

There remains a percentage of the population, identifying with the Islamic faith, who remember what it was like to be a Muslim before 9/11 and the War on Terror. However, this hard comparison of a life before and after as a Muslim remains an untouched and unexplored territory for hundreds and thousands of young people who identify or are linked with the Islamic faith in some way or other. During the key years when one embarks on the journey of approaching adulthood, questioning their identities and positionality – many were questioned, suspected or even convicted by their friends, neighbours and generally society at large for being the oppressor. Poorly disguised under the façade of camaraderie and banter were insults of “suicide bomber” or “terrorist” thrown across playgrounds and common rooms.

I have no idea what it was like to be a Muslim before the War on Terror and I never will. Every time I fill out a form that collects my demographic data, I am reminded that I am simply not British. That there is a difference between British – White and British – Pakistani. When filling out the faith section of the questionnaire, I stare long and hard at “Muslim”, and wonder if the question seeks to ask my definition of this word or if it asks whether I am the one to watch out for. Clumsily, awkwardly and guiltily, I have often clicked “prefer not to say”.

The events of 9/11, the subsequent war and the deeply entrenched issue of Islamophobia are not independent issues but interconnected. It has not affected only my childhood and growth into adulthood but also tainted innocent universal experiences with anxiety and fear.

I remember the pangs of anxiety every time I carried out a literature search for a project regarding mental health in conflict in case I am pinged for surveillance. Whilst leading the focus group for WREN’s Islamophobia Awareness Month, I remember Muslim colleagues refusing to take part or have minimal interaction as they did not wish to draw attention to themselves or “not wanting trouble”.

I remember carrying out an internet search for smaller unknown mosques where my friends could offer Friday prayers in Pakistan without risking an attack.  I remember my mother’s voice describing my uncle’s injuries after a rogue metal shrapnel found its way through his car window in an attack. Yesterday I told my friend living in Delhi to not go for a walk after hours given that it might be unsafe for a young Muslim to be out and about during that time.

The last twenty years of my life have made it impossible to be on one side of the Us vs Them rhetoric. My positionality and debates on war, borders and conflict have usually ended up with someone questioning, “So you agree with terrorists just bombing people, then?”.

The withdrawal of foreign intervention in Afghanistan was never going to be easy. Not for veterans, their families or anyone else who has lost someone or part of themselves during this conflict. The end of the occupation of Afghanistan calls for reflection from each one of us –individuals, communities, and organisations. The “refugee problem”, asides from being derogatory and condescending, feebly attempts to absolve responsibility from the conflict and crises of “foreigners”, which is heavily interlinked with foreign policies that extend decades before the war in Afghanistan.

Regardless of our respective journeys over the last twenty years, our identities, and our socio-political stances – as mental health professionals, but more importantly, as humans there is an urgent and dire need of reflection and introspection of our values. For me, it starts with the recognition of my privilege and positionality. Regardless of the difficulties that I have cited above in my own existential crisis, it does not take away the fact that I have lived in a country that is safe, a place where I have built a life and a place that I call home, where I have the freedom to speak up about my thoughts and curate such spaces. I have the confidence and a sense of safety in speaking out against what I deem to be oppression. If there is anything that I lack, it is perhaps the guilt that should surround of having an opinion about people 3500 miles from me, in conflict, to whom the above luxuries are not available to. And quite frankly, having some complicity in the state that they are in by the very virtue of the civil rights and luxuries I have just described.

Whilst the occupation in Afghanistan has come to an end, the same cannot be said about the trauma and its toll upon the mental health of countless groups who have suffered and lost. As mental health practitioners, this toll will find us as we help our veterans, victims and survivors of this war.

As much as this article has reflected my personal journey and offered a rudimentary critique of the difficulties surrounding recent events, I wish to remain optimistic and hopeful for the future. An important place to begin, therefore, is with gratitude to the dedicated, compassionate and caring staff members in this Trust and the wider NHS, for whom home was once a place far away with its respective conflicts and difficulties.

Thank you.