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Harjit: Hello. Welcome to the "Bundle of Hers." This is Harjit. And today, we are actually going to talk about a topic I think is really close to my heart, which is Islamophobia. We'll be talking about our experiences with this topic. And, as well, we also have a guest in the studio today, Ali Etman. Hi, Ali.

Ali: Hi. How's it going?

Harjit: Good. How are you?

Ali: Fantastic. Thanks for having me.

Harjit: Really excited that you're joining us. I think that your insight will be invaluable.

Before we start talking about this topic, I kind of just wanted to put something out there. I think that everything that we will be speaking about today is really our own experiences, our own stories. So these are going to be our words and our thoughts. And I don't think they represent anybody but us.

So I think let's first start about do you all remember when September 11th happened?

Ali: How do you forget?

Harjit: Yeah. Ali, can you tell us a little bit about that day and what happened around that time?

Ali: Sure. So just to give people a little bit of background about myself, my family is Egyptian. I came to the United States in about '96, '97, and we grew up in Syracuse, New York. So, around the time of 9/11, I was probably about 10 years old. I was in the fourth grade.

And I remember we got school off that day as soon as it happened. We went home and I'm sitting on the couch. My mom was with me, and we were watching it on the TV. And you could just see the plane flying through the air. The second one was the one I remember.

And I was a little kid. You didn't fully understand what was happening. But when you see your parent's reactions, you understand that it's something big. It's something huge. And I didn't understand it until I grew older, but that's where I was on that day.

Harjit: I remember I was in the fifth grade. I think I was 11. And then, I remember they made announcement that all the teachers need to turn on their TVs. So we didn't get a day off. We stayed there, and we all watched the television together. And at that point in time, I didn't really understand what was going on either, but I just remember thinking now that if I was older, how would I have felt watching that on TV with my classmates? So that's what I remember. Bushra, what about you?

Bushra: So I was in the third grade. I remember going to school that day, and it was, you know, a normal day. And then, all of a sudden, I felt like the mood was somber, and we didn't really know what was going on. But I remember all the parents coming to school and picking up their kids, and my mom came to pick me up.

And then I was like, "Well, what's going on?" And she was like, "Something terrible has happened." And I could tell from her voice that it wasn't good. And you can almost see some sort of like . . . she was scared about something, but I didn't really know what was going on.

What about you, Leen?

Leen: So I was in second grade and I was just about to . . . I was getting ready. So I had my backpack on and I was calling to my mom. And my mom wasn't answering. So I was like, "Okay, why is she not answering me? I need my socks," or whatever it was I needed.

And I found her staring at the TV. And she says, "Shh, Leen, I need to call khalto." And khalto in Arabic is aunt. And I realized . . . I looked on the TV and I saw the two towers with the smoke coming out. And I said . . .

And I guess, as a kid, I didn't fully understand it, but I did grow up seeing a lot of war images on TV because I am Palestinian. And so, for me, at first I was like, "What? What is going on? Not again. What's happening?" And I don't remember much after that, but I was kind of . . . when your parents are nervous, kids feel that, you know? And I thought, "Uh-oh, something is going to go down today. Something's not going to . . . there's something going down."

We ended up going to school that day and I remember we didn't have class, but instead, we had a session where we all had to write down what we saw and how we felt. I didn't really like to write. I drew a Barbie. And I wasn't sure, but I knew inside there's something massive going on.

Bushra: I think that was the first time that I heard the word terrorist in my life and I didn't know what it meant at that time. And so, looking back at it, you start seeing kind of the inclination of what people think, what terrorist means, how it's affected its manifestation throughout time for the last . . . how long has it been? Sixteen years now? The word terrorist has become synonymous with almost exclusively Muslim.

Ali: Yeah, I agree with you, Bushra. I remember the day after 9/11, my teacher announced to the class that, "Hey, you know, just because Ali is Egyptian, we're not going to treat him differently." I was puzzled with this because I didn't realize I was different. I was just a little kid like everyone. I wanted to play. I wanted to go outside, recess.

And you don't start to realize these differences until usually middle school when you're starting to develop your own identity and you're like, "Okay, this is a part of who I am." But I didn't really know I was different until that happened.

Harjit: So did she, like, single you out?

Ali: Yeah, and . . .

Harjit: How did that made you feel?

Ali: I was confused. And looking back, I don't know why they did that because, you know, these were my friends.

Harjit: That was that day, but what about what happened after that? So, Ali, could you kind of give us some experiences and how you processed everything that happened?

Ali: The most memorable one for me was 2003. America invades Iraq. This was during the George Bush presidency. And my local mosque starts a charity for victims of war in Iraq and a lot of families donate.

I used to live in a small apartment complex, and most of the kids of color in my school lived in this apartment complex. And my best friend, Mohammad, lived up the street and I would wait for the bus in front of his house. This morning, like 7:30 in the morning, I heard a knock at the door, and it's him and he's crying. He's bawling and in my arms. I'm holding him. I'm like, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" He said, "They took him. They took my dad." And I was like, "What do you mean?"

And we go out and we run up the street to see his dad. There are, like, seven cop cars, four FBI cars. His dad's face-down on the ground. And within 30 seconds, FBI is in my house. They got my whole family on the couch, and they're saying that the money we sent over was funding terrorism. And we were shocked because we . . . it's something my mosque put together, like, "Oh, help the victims of war." So it made no sense to us.

At the same time, the Patriot Act was around and they were allowed to detain people without, like, a reason. There are some members of my community in Syracuse who are in jail to this day because they donated more money. One of them was actually a respected doctor in our community, and he donated a couple thousand. And last I recall, he's still in prison until this day.

And they published that in the newspapers. About 150 families were investigated by the FBI in my community. And kids at school started reading that, and so then we started getting bullied at school.

And that's where I came across the word terrorist. Shortly after I got in my first fight, a kid called me a terrorist. I got angry. I don't remember it. I just remember being pulled off him. I saw red.

Harjit: Yeah. I feel like a lot of times, when something's that emotional, you just erase it.

Ali: Yeah. And it was really hard for my friend, Mohammad. His dad wasn't allowed to leave the state. He had a really hard time. My school wasn't very diverse. So the black kids and the Arabs, we kind of took care of each other. We kind of banded.

Harjit: That makes sense.

Ali: It was like, "You look out for us and we look out for you." So that was the most memorable one, the one that just shakes me every time I think about that.

The worst part of it is people who you thought were your friends would slip in bomb jokes, would slip in Arab jokes. And so people who you trusted made you feel vulnerable, and they took advantage of that power in your relationship. And so I kind of . . . I closed off. I never really shared with people that I was Muslim unless I was asked because I was like, "That's just the conversation I want to avoid entirely."

I remember . . . there are so many stories. My mom, we were at the DMV together. We both had New York licenses. We had to get new Wyoming licenses. And she went to DMV and they wouldn't let her get her license, and my mom asked them why. She's like, "Oh, you're wearing the hijab. You have to take that off if you want your license picture." And my mom's like, "Here's my New York license. You can see I have the hijab in my New York license."

They're like, "Miss, you can come after 4:00 in a room that's empty. You could take your hijab off and you can, you know, take your picture." And my mom was like, "You don't understand. If a cop stops me, this is how they're going to see me, like this. This is how I am outside of the house." They refused and they said, "Miss, unless you're a nun, we can't allow you to get your license."

I'm angry at the time. My mom is crying. We documented what happened there, and we wrote to CAIR in Washington, D.C. And CAIR is the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations. Anytime a Muslim experiences mistreatment, you know, this organization gets involved and they try their best to help out.

So we wrote to CAIR. CAIR wrote to . . . I'm not sure if it was the governor or the mayor of Wyoming, but we got a letter shortly after and the governor, I believe, apologized, and they said they changed the law and they included women wearing hijabs in the law to allow them to get their license. So my mother is the first Muslim woman in the state of Wyoming with a hijab on to get her license.

Harjit: That's amazing.

Ali: So I thought that was pretty cool. Bushra, you reacted a little. What were you feeling?

Bushra: So, when he said that the only exception that they would give is for nuns, which they're also wearing religious headgear, that, to me, capitalizes and underlines and highlights the double standard when it comes to Islam versus other religions in this country.

Like, your mom is also wearing the hijab for religious reasons. So how can they distinguish whether or not . . . or who they choose to allow to get the driver's license with whatever religious headgear they're going to wear? To me, that is absolutely outlandish. And I just don't get the logic other than it's discrimination. That's the only conclusion that I consistently come up with.

And it angers me because I'm Somali, and so a lot of Somalis wear hijab. It's just absurd to me if somebody wants to wear a head scarf, regardless of what religious preference they have, I don't understand how or why a country, which boasts about its religious freedom, continues to hinder that.

I feel like especially during a time . . . like, that was in early . . . what year was that in, that that happened?

Ali: It was probably 2010.

Bushra: Like, why would we still have to deal with that in 2010? That's baffling to me.

Harjit: I remember after 9/11 happened, we came home. My mom sells ice cream. So she sells ice cream, and she's been doing that for a lot of years. And my dad was like, "Make sure you put an American flag on your truck. You have to be careful." And then I was like, "What's all this fuss about?" I was always, like, in my own world when I was a child. But I remember, like, "Why? What's happening?" And my dad said, "Make sure you put on an American flag. We should put it in our house. We should put it on our cars."

Because after 9/11, one of the first hate crimes was actually Balbir Singh. He got shot. I think it was in Texas. He got shot because he was perceived as a Muslim. Although I'm Sikh, our community is often perceived as Muslims. So we are impacted by Islamophobia as well.

But I think I was maybe far removed from it because every time I would see something on TV, they'd mention Islam. They wouldn't mention Sikh people, right? So I never thought it really was intertwined in my community until I grew up and I realized how much it impacted our people.

I remember my uncle was deciding should he cut his hair so he doesn't wear a turban. So men in the Sikh faith usually wear turbans or dastaars. And I remember that a lot of people in my community were like . . .

You know, I'm just talking about it, but it was actually really sad because they had to choose to stop showing their identity so they could be safe, so they could support their families, so they could see their kids grow. They had to tell their sons, "You can't wear this anymore because you will be perceived as something else."

I think it's also important that Islamophobia, I feel like, existed before September 11th. I think we're centering our conversation around there because it's something that we know about, but I think that it's important to also know that these kinds of sentiments existed even before.

What are your thoughts about that, Bushra?

Bushra: I think, in a general sense, you're right. I think it did exist before 9/11. I feel like this country has bouts of, like, anti-immigration mentalities ingrained within. Every century, there's a new target group that is facing backlash for whatever cultural identity they have, or religious preference, or whatever. As far as Islamophobia, I didn't feel an impact until . . . and also I was just young at the time . . . until after September 11th.

Ali: Yeah. I would agree with Bushra. I didn't really notice it until after 9/11. The only thing I can think of is walking with my mom through the stores and I could feel the eyes looking at her as if she's the other, because, you know, the hijab in itself is so the opposite, 180-degree the opposite of what American . . . I wouldn't even know how to say this. American fashion or . . . you know what I'm saying? I don't know how to describe it, but it's just the opposite.

Harjit: Leen?

Leen: For me, I did feel it a lot more before 9/11 as well mostly because I come from . . . being a Palestinian-American, you know, the West knows about the conflict that goes on there.

But before 9/11, I guess I should say I wasn't afraid to say the word Palestinian-American. I wasn't afraid to say the word Muslim. I wasn't afraid to say the word Arab. And when 9/11 hit, I shut those words out of my vocabulary. I did not say it up until a freshman in college. It wasn't that nobody forced me to not say it, but I felt so scared to even say it, because I grew up seeing images from both war over there, and then I'm seeing racism here, and I just . . . growing up, I never felt like that I belonged anywhere.

So what happened was, after September 11, it was really hard. Kids who I used to play with would tell me, "Go bomb the Eiffel Tower." I got that a lot. That was something I heard up until, oh my gosh, even in high school. I heard, "Go bomb the Eiffel Tower. Go bomb the Eiffel Tower."

There was one girl who I started . . . you know, she was close to our house, so she was our neighbor, I guess. And I started hanging out with her. And then one day, I sensed something off with her. And she said, "Leen, come here. I need to talk to you. I can't play with you anymore. My parents don't want me to play with a Muslim girl."

For me, growing up, I never had friends. I was never able to communicate with anyone about how I felt or how I was discriminated. It was normal for them to discriminate against this group and that was normal for me. You accept the discrimination and you walk it off, you know?

Ali: I have a question for you, Leen.

Leen: Yeah.

Ali: You said walk it off after you experienced discrimination. Could you do that?

Leen: No. But you can bottle it up and walk it off, right? So I think . . .

Bushra: That's more like it.

Ali: Yeah. That's the answer I was looking for.

Leen: My mom, she always said, "[foreign language 00:16:52]." You know, just turn yourself away and walk away. Don't bother with it because it's too dangerous to confront it.

Bushra: Oh, yeah. My parents, my mom especially, anytime something happens, her initial reaction is, "Don't say anything. Don't do anything to piss anybody off. Keep your mouth shut and make sure you get home safe." Those were the . . . her main priority is to make sure that all of her kids are safe. She doesn't want us to be, like, the next victim of a racial or Islamophobic attack.

Harjit: Yeah. I think that going back off of what Bushra was saying and Leen and Ali, literally, your parents are just fighting to see you alive the next day. And if you think of life that way, "Just one more day, can I see my child be happy, be normal, be who they want to be, being fully ourselves?"

And I think that one thing that this whole discussion really taught me is . . . I identify as a Sikh. We are perceived as Muslims. But even then, the brunt that I think Muslims get, it's not fair either. So it doesn't matter that I'm a Sikh. I shouldn't be treated like . . . and I'm perceived as a Muslim. No one should be treated that way.

And I think when we were having this discussion of doing this episode, I don't think I really asked you how you all identified, but I know you all are perceived as Muslims, and so am I. I think that was kind of really the point that is also a strong point that we got to accomplish today, because all four of us are speaking on this together.

So we're all medical students. We're all going to be physicians. And I wanted to talk about why you think this topic matters and it matters to our professions. Ali?

Ali: I think the thing for me is I understand that I move through medicine differently than most of my classmates. I understand that I represent more than myself. I understand that failure is not an option for me, because I'm not just a medical student. I'm the brown medical student. When I'm a doctor, they're never going to see only a doctor. They're going to see a Muslim and a doctor.

So, back to what you were saying, my mom always told me, "Keep your head down. Do your work. And when you end up at the top and you're successful, they'll be like, 'Oh, look, he's a good doctor. Oh, and he's Muslim.'"

So part of me feels that burden, like I have to be the example for my religion and my people and my culture so I can show people, "Hey, we're not all terrorists." I even hate saying that word. But that's the pressure I feel on myself.

So that's how I feel about it. Bushra, how do you feel?

Bushra: I guess I always have this fear that being a good doctor is not going to be enough. I always fear that someone is not going to want me as their doctor because of my skin color or my religion.

My last name is Hussein. And most people know right off the bat that I'm Muslim. Before even meeting me, if they see my name, they already know that. That association has already been made.

I can't really do anything about other people's biases against me. I think what I can do is treat people the way that I would want them to treat my parents regardless of how they feel, how they feel about where they come from, how they feel about their religion.

When we come into this profession, medicine, we come in it with the best of intentions, and we don't really see our biases sneak up and cloud our judgment. And so, for me, it's like a constant battle trying to figure out who I am as a person and what I believe. How do I effectively process all of my differing biases or emotions or whatever it is to be the best possible physician that I can be for my patients?

Leen, what about you?

Leen: For me, I think a big motivator of me going into medicine was because I want to build bridges between the two communities. I feel that, you know, if a patient comes up to me and says, "I don't want to be treated by you because of either your religion or your race or culture," I want to almost get to the center of that with that patient. I want to say, "You know, tell me about that. Why does that bother you?"

Hopefully, by doing that, we can change . . . not necessarily change perspectives, but we can change the way that that visit is going. And we can, hopefully, both walk off with positive experiences that would bring us back to reality that we're all human and medicine is a human business, I guess, in a sense. We're studying physiology and the sociology of what it is to be human.

Harjit, what about you?

Harjit: I think one of my biggest fears is I realize that all the systems are connected. ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ is connected to government. Government is connected to education. And when a lot of this rhetoric of a certain group being marginalized is happening in one section of our system, it impacts all the systems.

So, as someone who is a medical student, I'm always trying to be aware of that. I'm always trying to think of that. Like, "Is this really true or is this impacted by something else?"

And I think it's really difficult to get rid of all of this, I would say, garbage. No, maybe not garbage. I think it's hard to get rid of all of these conceptions, all these notions, all these stereotypes, all these judgments. But as someone who plans to become a physician, I hope that even if one of us goes into this profession and makes sure that they treat those the way they would like to be treated, and then if we all carry that sentiment, I think that could be really effective.

But yeah, my biggest fear, I would say, and something I don't really have the answer to, is all systems are influenced by each other. And sometimes when things get really ingrained in a system, it's difficult to erase them. So I just try to be critical of seeing that, so I'm not fooled into thinking something is something it's not.

Okay. So we have Margaux who was listening. Margaux, what are you thinking?

Margaux: I feel like I have an experience that is similar to the majority of the country, and it was important for me to sit back and listen to experiences different than mine. It was really important for me to sit back and just listen without any expectations coming in of what I was going to hear or feeling like I should ask questions. There's a lot of power in sitting and just listening without asking or talking.

And I think that also is relatable to the practice of medicine. When they say most of your diagnoses come from your patient history, listening is a great skill to have. And so, from this experience, sitting right here, I've learned so much from each of you just by listening. And I hope that, in the future, I can take that skill with me forward.

I think if you just ask and start a dialogue where your only expectation is to listen to the person that may be different from you, whether that's your colleague or your student peer or your patient, there's so much power that can come from just listening, so much power and understanding. So thank you guys for letting me be here to listen.

Ali: Thanks for listening.

Harjit: So, Ali, is there anything else that you wanted to add?

Ali: So one thing I wanted to talk about was the globalization of Islamophobia. I want people to understand that this goes beyond the United States. When I travel . . . I've been to Europe a couple of times and I have a really hard time there.

I remember one time I went to Germany, and I took 20 steps outside of the airplane and I was surrounded by 3 security guards. And they took me to another room. Another time, I was in France. I was on the train with a group of 30 I was traveling with and we were crossing into Italy. And the Italian police get on the train. I was sleeping at the time. And next thing you know, I'm being shaken awoke. And it was one of the Italian police and they asked for my papers.

Most recently, I just got back from Ghana and France. I got pulled aside in Amsterdam. And it's embarrassing to be pulled aside in front of your friends and taken with cops to a back room. A part of you is like, "This is my burden to bear. I don't want them to see this." But another part is like, "I'm glad they saw this to know that this is my reality."

Even when I got back to Salt Lake, one of my friends was waiting for me for like 20 minutes. I got held in Salt Lake for about 45 minutes. And the security was like, "He's going to be awhile. You need to go." And he told my friend to leave. And when I asked them, I was like, "Why am I being pulled aside?" And he's like, "Oh, it's a computer glitch. But I know what it was.

And so I . . . I don't know. It always follows you, like a dark cloud.

Bushra: Can I ask you a question?

Ali: Yes, go ahead.

Bushra: Do you have an American passport?

Ali: I do not have an American passport.

Bushra: Okay. So I do have an American passport, and my experience has been the same. I went to . . . me and brother last summer, we went up to Canada. And going into Canada, perfectly fine. Nothing. But when we tried to come back into the country, we got stopped by the border patrol people. They told us to get out of the car. We went to this holding area where there are a lot of people that they tell to, you know, come out and whatever information is missing, whatever they find in their car, blah, blah, blah.

So we get out. There was nothing in our car. We both have American passports and we were there for five hours.

Ali: Wow.

Bushra: Five hours. Not to mention there was one guy who they found weed in his car. His stay was only an hour. And so, in the back of my head, I'm thinking, "If my name was a generic, you know, Western name, I don't think I would have been stopped." And so that's always kind of in the back of my mind.

When my mom travels, especially my mom, she doesn't speak English very well, I always get scared and I'm always calling her because I want her to be okay. I don't know what's going to happen at that point.

And so that fear is constantly . . . like, you have to include that into your travel time, I almost feel like. It's always there. You don't know what's going to happen. An American passport, I feel like, doesn't exclude you from any of these . . . I think it's discrimination, but . . .

Harjit: I 100% agree with that sentiment. I think the reason we chose to do this podcast is because our voices should be present in this discussion because we're impacted by everything that happened. America is our country.

Ali: Absolutely.

Harjit: And so it's important that our voices are in this discussion. And I think that's one reason we were really excited to do this podcast.

I will say that it's actually sad that when we actually thought of this idea to do this podcast, we had so much turmoil, like, "Should we even do this? What will we be perceived as?" And the reason it makes me sad is I'm just telling you about who I am. Ali's just telling us about his experiences, and Leen, Bushra. These are things that make us human. And it's so sad that even for that, we had to think so much if we could do this podcast or not.

Ali: You're always scared to be vulnerable and share. But when it's all said and done, I'm glad I did it.

Harjit: I think we're making history.

Ali: I hope so. Thank you. Thank you, ladies.