Besides mass death and destruction, the 9/11 terrorists left behind another toxic footprint, especially in South Florida: Islamophobia.
The 19 terrorists were al-Qaeda Islamists — but they hijacked Islam just as sinisterly as they hijacked the four jetliners they flew into New York's World Trade Center and other U.S. targets on Sept, 11, 2001.
Even so, humane and law-abiding Muslim-Americans were suddenly forced to face a national convulsion of suspicion and animosity that, a quarter century later, they're experiencing again today.
READ MORE: On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a Palm Beach County teacher gets to the heart of the history
The bigotry felt particularly heavy in places like Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, where the terrorists had covertly trained in the months leading up to their 9/11 atrocities.
Muslims like Mohamed Ghumrawi, then an 11-year-old boy in Boynton Beach, were all too aware of the anti-Muslim sentiment their community experienced at the time — and it helped prepare them for a new wave.
Ghumrawi — who today is a director at the Jaffer Center for Muslim World Studies at Florida International University — spoke about the Islamophobia then and now with WLRN Americas editor Tim Padgett.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
PADGETT: When 9/11 happened, you were just old enough to sense the anti-Muslim backlash here.
Yeah, absolutely. I was growing up in Boynton Beach, Florida. And I remember when the list of names of the terrorists was released, I went to school the next day, and almost instantly, my name being Mohamed, I was called terrorist by some of the other kids.
And many Muslims who could shorten their names began to do so. So Mohameds became Mo; Bilals became Bills — and I even have an uncle whose name is Osama. He started going by Sam, because of course, the name Osama during that time was a very difficult name to have.
There were many conversations about whether Muslim women should be wearing the hijab [the traditional Muslim women's head covering].
And I would imagine this was all made heavier for the Muslim community here by the fact that the 9/11 terrorists trained for the attacks largely in South Florida.
Oh, absolutely. My family is Lebanese and Palestinian — and while most of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, I would think twice about telling people what my religion was, because Muslims were seen as this monolith, and Muslims and Islam became associated with violence and extremism.
What then, Mohamed, feels similar about the Islamophobia the Muslim community experienced then in the wake of 9/11 and what it's experiencing today?
In the aftermath of 9/11, the narrative that the Bush administration invoked in order to justify its war on terror really became this us-versus-them mentality. And drawing from Bernard Lewis' and Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" [thesis], it was really the West versus Islam.
And today, even though there hasn't been such an event of violence against Americans here on American soil, we're starting to see the resurgence of this Islamophobia framed as this clash of civilizations: that Muslims are bad, they're bad for the United States, their way of life is incompatible with the American way of life. And so we're starting to see a lot of politicians, political commentators, and others increase the negative comments towards Islam and Muslims.
I also think another factor is the conflict in Gaza, and now the current war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, as well as the rise of some notable Muslim politicians — the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, and [Abdul] El-Sayed in Michigan.
You know, though, I do remember then President George W. Bush making a point of saying at that time that Islam was a religion of peace.
I'm glad you brought that up because I also wanted to mention it. I believe it was a week after the attacks, President Bush actually visited the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and he made remarks to quell some of that animosity that was arising, and he made that comment that Islam is peace.
And I think he was attempting to create a distinction between the terrorists that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and the everyday Musli-Americans who are just an integral part of the fabric of American society.
And so relating that to what we see today, I think those efforts of inclusivity have almost vanished, especially within the Republican Party and the political landscape that we see today.
"In March, Representative Randy Fine, a Republican here in Florida, said, 'We need more Islamophobia, not less.'"Mohammed Ghumrawi
So much of that seems to stem from this erroneous, if not absurd, idea that Muslims want to impose Sharia law on the U.S.
Yeah, so Sharia law in its literal translation means "the path." Sharia is essentially a set of principles that were revealed by Allah, or God, for how Muslims should live their lives in a just and ethical manner. And so it covers daily personal conduct such as ethics or religious rituals, hygiene, and family life.
But there really is no specific list of Sharia laws — and yet we've seen this sort of anti-Sharia movement grow within the United States. We've recently have seen the newly created Sharia Free America caucus launched by a group of U.S. representatives. We've also seen, actually just in August, a newly formed far-right Sharia Free Texas legislative caucus.
And they're using that pretext to withhold voucher money from Muslim schools?
Florida and Texas seem to be the leaders in a lot of [that sort of] legislation coming out. But certainly, I think it echoes a lot of the fear of Islam and Muslims that we saw post-9/11, and now it's re-manifesting itself in different ways, whether it's attempting to shut down the Council on American Islamic Relations, [or] even more recently, Governor Greg Abbott in Texas launched a public campaign that targeted Muslim washing stations at airports.
In March, Representative Randy Fine, a Republican here in Florida, said, "We need more Islamophobia, not less."
Are Muslims themselves, though, Mohamed, doing enough to make Americans aware of how much Islam dovetails with Christianity and Judaism, for example?
Yeah, here in the United States, we see this emphasis on Judeo-Christian values. However, the average American doesn't realize that Islam is one of the monotheistic religions. It recognizes all of the same prophets within Christianity and Judaism: Abraham, Moses, Jesus. The Quran has its own chapter dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
And it also shares in many of the same values: fasting, giving to the poor, taking care of family, treating thy neighbor well. All of these things are embedded within Islam.
But I know many Muslims feel there's nonetheless an unfair double standard at play when it comes to matters like 9/11.
Yes. Even so, for the last two and a half decades, if a terrorist attack is committed and the perpetrator is a Muslim, the Muslim community very swiftly has to deliver remarks of condemnation — of apology.
But if the perpetrator is Christian or Jewish, there's not an expectation that those communities have to come out and condemn it or apologize for it they way we have to.
