Calif, August 21: Yousuf is a Muslim, one of only two in an all-boys Catholic prep school in Southern California. He has been asked if he’s a terrorist and routinely shrugs off jokes about bombs and jihad.
“Sometimes I feel like I take it upon myself to be a better example,” he said on a recent evening after returning for a weeklong football camp.
Yousuf is among thousands of children who navigate every day the subtle and complex challenges that come with growing up Muslim in a deeply traumatized post-Sept. 11 America. Some were still in diapers and others in grade school when hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a decade ago, but their childhoods have been deeply touched by the pain and anger of a nation struggling to come to terms with a day that, for them, represents the worst perversion of their faith.
For some, like Yousuf in California and others across the country, the bullying, the hard stares and endless defense of their identity has nurtured a deeper faith and a maturity and resilience that surprises even their parents.
“I tell them that when they’re out in the world, they represent the best of our community, they are our faith ambassadors,” said Kari Ansari, who was pregnant with her youngest child on Sept. 11 and lives outside Washington, D.C with her family. “They will have learned to have compassion for people who maybe don’t even deserve that kind of compassion — dealing with bigots and dealing with prejudice — and that’s a great life lesson.”
For Ansari’s oldest daughter, Aneesa, that lesson colors her earliest memories.
She started attending a private Muslim kindergarten in Denver just days before Sept. 11 and it shut down for two weeks after angry protesters gathered outside. It eventually reopened, but an armed security guard stayed on campus for almost a year.
Today, the 15-year-old is deeply invested in her religious identity and exudes a quiet pride at being Muslim. She began wearing a head scarf in public without prompting in the fifth grade and has never removed it despite being cursed at while waiting in line at Ikea, stared at and pressured at school, she said.
Aneesa goes to the library during the lunch hour so she can observe the holy month of Ramadan (a month of no food or water from sunrise to sundown) and said she prefers to spend time with other Muslim teens to avoid the pressure to drink and do drugs.
–Agencies