Halfway around the world, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saad Shaikh was flipping through television channels when he settled on CNN International. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and as he watched, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
Two years later, the summer before his senior year of high school, Shaikh moved to San Jose with his father in hopes of attending an American university.
But while the move proved to be challenging in many ways, being scrutinized for being a foreign Muslim was not one of them, he said.
“To tell you the truth, everyone that I met was nice to me. They were more curious about life (in Saudi Arabia). They were more curious about the lifestyle. Everyone was nice,” he said.
Shaikh, a fourth-year business economics student, spent the following year acclimating himself to a new culture and applying to colleges. That spring, he was accepted to UCLA.
On the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, many Muslims are reflecting on the kinds of changes that have taken place since 2001.
Some Muslims, such as Jameel Kassam, fourth-year history student, said they feel increasingly negative media coverage and the impression it has left on the American public has made it more difficult for the Muslim community to feel comfortable being open about its faith.
But Jennifer Propper, vice chair of the Bruin Republicans, said she believes Americans are making negative assumptions about the Muslim community because it has not been vocal enough in clarifying its position against violence.
Kassam said that though his neighbors in Southern California made no issue of his family’s religious affiliation in the weeks following Sept. 11, a family trip to New York shortly after illustrated the kind of negative attention Muslims were receiving at the time.
“It was pretty bad. A man told (my mother), “Say hi to Osama bin Laden for me,” Kassam said.
While those and several other comments he heard at his high school at the time were merely jokes, they were indicative of a new attitude toward Muslims, he said.
Kassam said the overnight press coverage of Muslims and the Islamic religion made him feel as though he was in the spotlight.
“I felt very comfortable before (Sept. 11) telling people I’m Muslim or going to mosque because I felt like we were under the radar, and not too many people knew too much about us,” he said.
Now, Kassam said, Muslims are met with suspicion and, at times, hostility.
Part of the challenge of being Muslim has been the media coverage of Islam and the resulting misconceptions many people have of what his religion is about, Shaikh said.
“I think people get their views and influence from the media and a lot of what they show, and what’s going on is with radical Islamic groups. A lot of what’s been covered has been bombs and riots “¦ (and) that’s not an accurate portrayal. I think the image of Islam has gotten worse since then,” he said.
Kassam said one of the major trends he has noticed in the six years since the attacks is the way Islam has been taken out of its context as a faith and become politicized in the media.
In the years since the attacks, he has seen Muslims categorized as a political group advancing unpopular political agendas, akin to Communists, rather than members of a popular faith, he said.
But Propper said she believes some of the negative presumptions of Muslims may be due to their less-than-outspoken behavior.
While she said she believes some Muslims speak out against acts of violence, as a whole the Muslim community is not vocal enough, she said.
“The confusion comes when the attacks happen, here or across the world, (and) we don’t seem to see a huge public outcry from the Muslim community,” she said.
Propper said people who are informed about the religious aspects of Islam and the Muslim lifestyle need to speak up.
“If people were to say terrorism is not reflective of our religion, we’re against it, we’re against what happened on Sept. 11, then people wouldn’t feel (this) way,” she said.
Erum Iqbal, a third-year psychobiology student, said that while some effects of the media coverage surrounding her community have been negative, she has seen positive changes as well.
Iqbal said she saw an increased interest in Islam after the attacks, and many community members wanted to learn more before they made any judgments.
Iqbal’s mosque hosted nights where community members of any religion were welcome to voice their anger and ask questions about the Muslim community.
“It’s been a step toward peaceful coexistence,” she said.