Hifza Hameed was only about five months old when the planes hit the two towers in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. 

But the impact of the attacks has had an outsized impact on her life and identity.

Whenever the anniversary rolls around, the Brooklyn College student braces herself for the interactions she’ll have.

“Whenever it was the day-of, it felt really awkward and kind of isolating,” said Hameed, 20. “I felt eyes on me, basically.” 

Anjum Uddin wasn’t born when 9/11 happened but also relates to this feeling of trepidation on this date.

She distinctly remembers one traumatizing experience on the 18th anniversary in 2019.

The Bronx native had recently started attending high school in Manhattan when a man approached her and her father saying 9/11 was their fault.

“To be getting the blame for something that I wasn't even alive for, it was like, ‘What the heck? Why is this happening to me?’ ” Uddin, 16, said.

The impact of the attacks — from foreign policy to immigration — continues to be felt in the U.S. and around the world 20 years later. 

But for Generation Z Muslims, young people who were born roughly between the mid-1990s through the 2010s, the fallout against their community has been a defining experience on their identities. 

From mosques to cafes, the New York Police Department conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim communities in the wake of the attacks. Their surveillance of college campuses and Muslim student groups was so far-reaching it included schools outside city borders.

The Demographics Unit, the NYPD team of plainclothes officers infiltrating Muslim communities, was disbanded in 2014. The department eventually settled three lawsuits over the matter, paying out more than $1 million in damages and legal fees.

But the blanket targeting of Muslims endured. 

Former President Trump on the campaign trail in 2015 said his goal as president would be a “total and complete shutdown” of borders to Muslims. On his eighth day in office, he instituted the “Muslim ban,” which suspended U.S. entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. 

As the 20th anniversary approaches, young Muslims shared their reflections on what it’s been like growing up in the wake of the attacks in NYC, how it’s strengthened their identities over time and their hope for the future generation.

These conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.
 

Mosaab Sadeia, 21, Staten Island

I think I met my first informant when I was about 9 years old. 

It was at this new mosque when it opened up and I remember the man trying to fit in. He kept asking weird questions. This was a very prevalent thing. I've met many people that I’ve suspected to be informants. And many of them, we did find out later that, yes, they were informants. They always ask, like, ‘What do you think of Hamas? What do you think of Palestine? What do you think of Israel?’ And I'm like, ‘Dude, I'm 8 years old.”

It was a lot more concentrated in New York because New York had a very active Muslim community for a very long time. It still does, but it definitely got hit because of the informants. For example, I know, off the top of my head, at least five different mosques — not talking about the ones I know of, but ones that I've attended — that shut down their youth programs because of issues with informants.

Hifza Hameed, 20, Brooklyn College

On COVID’s impact on the upcoming 20th anniversary: It's so much easier being home and not going outside where you would get stared at. I remember being in middle school and whenever the topic would come up, people would just look at you like, ‘Oh no — that's the people.’

I remember there was this trend among the kids, like, popping a bottle. Whenever it would go ‘boom,’ they'd yell things in Arabic that are related to Islam. It wasn’t even the kids that were the bullies or the mean kids, but rather the friends that we always talked to and knew of, basically. It was just so normal that it wasn't really seen to be bad.

Anjum Uddin, 16, The Bronx

I live in the Bronx so it's predominantly people of color. I hadn't really had much backlash being a young Muslim woman, but it was mainly when I started going to school in Manhattan, when I started experiencing it. I was understanding, like, ‘Oh, wow, people are still taking their anger out on Muslim people because of what happened years ago.’

Because I grew up with religious parents, they always told me that what had happened on 9/11 — it’s not a representation of Islam. It goes against all Islamic principles. 

Mohammad Faseyh Sikandar, 23, born in Brooklyn

A few days before 9/11, my family left Brooklyn to visit our extended family in Pakistan. Then the tragedy happened. That ended up being 10 years of us living in Pakistan because our families were too scared to come back, thinking there's some sort of hostility and retaliation towards Muslims. 

There was this fear. The Muslim community -- especially of New York -- was traumatized after 9/11. We had many, many family members who did the same thing as us. A lot of them went back to Pakistan and you see a mass exodus in the community that a lot of people don't talk about. My first cousins — they ended up leaving for Pakistan right after 9/11. And they haven't been back since. 

On patriotism and fitting in: I became a part of the Junior [Reserve Officers' Training Corps program], doing as much as I can to prove myself. When I look back at it, I don't regret those things because they shaped me as a person. At the same time, Muslim Americans are held to a higher standard of patriotism. If you want to be a Muslim American in politics or policy or government, you have to prove your patriotism.

Haris Khan, 23, City College graduate

On the impact of 9/11 on non-Muslim Gen Z’ers: For them, it was a moment in their lifespan, but it didn't define every little thing that followed. For many of us, it became our identity. 

Growing up, my family would tell me to not be so publicly religious. And then when we got to America, that doubled down even more. The first time I tried to grow a stubble, my mom clearly told me, ‘No, you have to get rid of it.’ And I said, ‘Why? I think it looks cool.’ And she said, ‘No, we don't want you to get killed. We don't want you walking around the subway, somebody pushes you on the tracks. We don't want any of that to happen to you.’ 

On how 9/11 changed Muslim identity: Most people did not see themselves as this one identity pre-9/11. People saw themselves as Pakistani or Indian or Bangladeshi or Arab or African American. They might not even call themselves Muslims — it might be a very small part of their identity. But after that incident, whether you're practicing or not, whether you believe in a certain law or not — you are a Muslim. In the eyes of a white supremacist, you are Muslim. The Muslim identity in New York, especially, is really centered around what happened with 9/11, the national security apparatus that was created and the marginalization of a group of people. 

I think Gen Z Muslims, because of 9/11, definitely are no longer taking anything for granted. Very commonly, we’d hear that pre-9/11 there's almost a sense of invincible-ness because we're, like, an invisible minority. Mosques are there, people pray, nothing happens. People do their thing, everything is fine. But now, every day is a reminder that it could be taken away from you so easily, and you could be dehumanized, weaponized. Your identity is politicized very easily at a turn of a day, and someone can come up on national TV, someone can have thousands of people in front of them and say they’d like to ban an entire group of people that look like me, literally ban people from visiting their mothers or their children or their spouses in other countries. That all forces you to be a lot more cognizant of the forces that make these decisions, the politics, the people in power, the money, the defense contractors, everybody.  Now, it's like we're either getting organized or we're getting deported. 

I have a hoodie, which says, the Muslim Student Association of City College. Sometimes I'd go out, and my mom would be like, ‘You could wear something that's more neutral.’ But I would intentionally wear it. And think that's partially because you just don't want to live like that for the rest of your life. If times haven't changed, we're going to force them to change. We're not gonna give up.

Aicha Belabbes, 24, case worker

That early mid-2000s time was really hard and challenging. I think it was just a lot easier for my parents to put us in a sheltered environment. My mom said that when a parent found out my name was Arabic, she told her kid not to play with me anymore. My mom said she felt very isolated and was scared for me. 

I didn't get diagnosed with autism and ADHD until the age of 22 because the teachers told my parents that they wanted to put me in special education. My mom was worried that being Muslim and neurodivergent was kind of too much so she put me in Islamic school.

Ramish Nadeem, 23, Advocates for Youth

On what it was like in school on 9/11 anniversaries: There would be the solemn, weird, awkward-as-hell moment in the classroom. It definitely made me feel singled out because they named Islam in a particular kind of way in that space. I felt that association of like — the only time we talk about Muslims in the classroom is on 9/11 — on this day, in this particular kind of charged format with the images and people screaming and crying as the towers fall. This is when I'm like, 7, 8, 9 years old so I did not have the tools to make sense of that.

A close friend of mine asked me once — he was like, ‘You're not that kind of Muslim, are you?’ Like, trying to make sense of it. I was like, ‘No,’ although I think both of us didn't understand the question. We were all struggling to make sense of this with the limited tools that we had filtered through the media landscape that we had at the time and through our teachers with their particular impressions and understandings.

On the upcoming 20th anniversary: I'm more aware of my Muslim identity and how I'm showing up in my circles than I usually am.

Palvasha Khan, 18, freshman at Williams College

On the 9/11 anniversaries: I genuinely feel very uncomfortable—I'm not gonna lie. It’s a horrible thing that happened, but at the same time, it's a constant reminder of the spike in Islamophobia that occurred, all the terrible things that ensued. It was used as a justification to harm so many other lives. I just get really uncomfortable when people talk about it. 

There was this one incident in the sixth grade. This kid was talking to me and he made this really terrible joke that I didn't even realize was super bad at that moment. He called me ‘the queen of the Taliban’ because my parents are Pakistani. He was aware of that. And he put a crown on my head. It was really weird and I didn't understand it. I just felt very upset. 

On the pressure to educate others: I feel like everybody expects me to know everything about Islam. Because I'm Muslim, I must know absolutely everything. I have to constantly defend myself. I had to know my facts. I had to be confident in my identity or else it would just continue to spread more Islamophobia. And I think in that sense, I've had to become really confident in who I am.