How Canadian Muslims are creating a new narrative after 9/11
For many Muslims 9/11 was a massive rupture tearing apart how they saw themselves
This is the final episode of a three-part series in which IDEAS producer, Naheed Mustafa, peers into the house the War on Terror built.
*Originally published on Dec. 17, 2021.
For many Muslims in the west, 9/11 was a massive rupture, tearing apart the way they saw themselves and how their communities saw them.
But for many others, the events of 20 years ago weren't necessarily definitive. For them, especially younger Muslims, the shockwaves in the aftermath of 9/11 are merely life as they've known it — there's simply no radically different past to compare it to.
Two decades after 9/11, some of that rupture is finally healing. Despite the scarring caused by the war on terror, new narratives are being written.
Jasmin Zine is a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University. In her forthcoming book, Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, she examines the impact of post-9/11 domestic security policies in western nations on Muslim youth. Zine points out that whereas older generations experienced 9/11 as a catastrophic break from the norm, for the so-called 9/11 generation life as a suspicious minority is the norm.
"The 9/11 generation didn't really know much of a world before that time. And so this was the new normal that they were being socialized into. Many of us knew the kinds of changes that were being ushered in that affected our lives in multiple ways," she told IDEAS.
Zine adds that some of these changes were keenly felt by non-Muslims as well — how people travel, extra security, racial profiling. But the newly charged, highly securitized environment was brought to bear most heavily on Muslim citizens.
An embedded history of Islamophobia
Zine says it's important to note that Islamophobia and anti-Muslim animus didn't start with 9/11 — there's a long history of treating Muslims in western nations as suspicious interlopers — but September 11, 2001 was a catalytic force in creating a new kind of normal. One that the younger generation doesn't always see as a rupture.
"When you ask them, how did 9/11 affect you, they'll respond with, well, no, it didn't really affect me." But, says Zine, when young people are pushed and asked what kinds of activities Muslim student groups are doing at university, for example, they'll mention all the things they don't do for fear of appearing suspicious.
[Muslim students] adapt their behaviours to manoeuvre within this, sort of, Islamophobic environment.- Jasmin Zine
Zine talks about students wanting to go play paintball in the woods but then rejecting the idea because "we don't want to be seen as like a terrorist cell that is planning or plotting some sort of an action against the country." She said they approach campus activities the same way. Students talked about no longer playing violent video games like Call of Duty in public places for fear of someone getting the wrong idea. Yet, Zine says, these same students will say 9/11 didn't really affect their lives.
"So they keep coming back with that. But they also talk about the ways in which they adapt their behaviours to manoeuvre within this, sort of, Islamophobic environment in ways that for us, we can notice and say that, 'yeah, that is an adaptation that they're making.' But for them, it's simply part and parcel of how they live their lives and the considerations that they have as being part of this generation."
Government policies targeting Muslim groups
Learning how not to appear suspicious is certainly not an adaptation limited to Muslim youth.
"Banking while Indigenous" or "driving while Black" are long-standing versions of "paintballing while Muslim" and history shows us that every era has its suspects. Zine says often the greatest obstacles in challenging Islamophobia is the messaging of liberal governments in the west.
"We may have governments that will say the right things and will celebrate Muslim identities and so on. But at the same time have policies that are directly targeting and maligning Muslim groups."
She points to Quebec's secularism law, Bill 21, which asserts a policy of state secularism. But in practice, it has disproportionately targeted Muslim women in hijab by denying them public sector work.
In 2014, the Citizenship and Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, moved to ban veiling the face at citizenship ceremonies. And in 2015, the federal Conservative government used the term "barbaric cultural practices" to introduce legislation that appeared primarily to be aimed at Muslims.
Zine says while it's important to acknowledge this history and its ongoing impact, it's also important to note that within this new securitized environment that is normalized for younger generations, Muslim youth are pushing back. They are making connections to broader communities and longer histories to show that while today the focus may be on Muslim citizens, there was a time when it was someone else. And, likely, in the future it will be yet another group.
She says in the course of her research and speaking to young people across the country, the key point that came up over and over was that despite their difficulties, younger Muslim didn't see any fundamental contradictions in their identity as both Canadian and Muslim.
"They feel very strongly that they are Canadian and that they are Muslim and that they will advocate for themselves in that capacity, that they will use the tools that are available to them, and they will organize and they will find ways to try and challenge what they're experiencing. And that they can do that as Canadians."
Guests in this episode:
Jasmin Zine is a professor in the department of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her book, Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation will be available April 2020.
Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a culture writer at Buzzfeed News and hosts a CBC podcast called Pop Chat.
Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and journalist.
Mehreen Kasana is a Pakistani-American writer.
*This series was produced by Naheed Mustafa.
