By Katherine Palmateer (Contributor) – Email
Date Posted: September 27, 2011
Print Edition: September 21, 2011
The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 has provoked a lot of discussion recently, causing many to search for after-effects and examine the event’s subsequent influence on our society even today. The Race and Anti-Racism Network (RAN) hosted an informative presentation Monday evening on this very topic, called “Race and September 11, 2001: Ten Years Later”. The gathering, held at U-house, featured three guest speakers that shared information from both a personal and an educational level.
UFV’s Sidrah Ahmad spoke first, sharing her experience growing up in the Fraser Valley in a Muslim community. She expressed how her parents modeled their faith to her, but allowed her to choose her own path. For Ahmad, this included choosing to wear a hijab (head covering) when in public. Her main message was that she wanted to see “dialogue to create understanding,” and have people ask questions, rather than judge someone based on their appearance.
She spoke of extremism, and how there truly is good and bad in every faith, culture and community. Therefore, she explained, the idea of bad or good should not be attached to any particular group – we are all human. Her message was that “out of everything that has happened since 9/11 – the pain and the confusion – there is a silver lining.”
The presentation’s second speaker was Itrath Syed, a Women’s Studies instructor at Langara College who is working on her doctoral project on the topic of moral panic involving Muslim bodies in the West. Syed shared that her own experience in the aftermath of 9/11 caused her to immediately “feel visible and invisible.”
She talked of how there was so much humanization and compassion throughout the United States during the attacks, yet three weeks after the attacks on the US, bombs were dropped on Kabul and anyone who looked a certain way was extremely dehumanized.
The comparison she drew was the difference between what would happen if a Caucasian and a Muslim were to become mentally ill. She explained that if a person who is Muslim becomes mentally ill, the common response is to try to deport them, whereas if a Caucasian person has the same experience, no one tries to find out if they are – for example – Swedish, to have them deported. Syed also addressed how in the past, the Muslim community was viewed very differently than today because “How they were defined as ‘the other’ shifted, because the norm shifted.”
She mentioned the passing of Bill 94 in Quebec, which prevents people from accessing government service unless their face is uncovered. That means that women who are dressed according to their faith cannot get access to healthcare, language classes or universal child care. She finished by saying that it is good to ask what is made possible, and who gains from statements and actions that stigmatize, judge or marginalize a population of people.
Alison Wainwright, a UFV alumna, was the third speaker and her message was clear: “See each person as an individual.” She wanted people to ask the question “why?” and to learn about different communities, rather than to merely make blanket statements. Syed closed the presentation by reminding the audience that racialized groups get a stigma attached to them and that “It’s never going to be a good day with that much on your shoulders.”
