Twenty years ago, Fahima Khalaf watched in horror as the World Trade Center towers in New York City crumbled to dust on live TV.
She huddled with her month-old son, Mohammad, at the Las Vegas home where she, her husband and their three children had moved just months earlier.
“I was in bed with him and watching what was going on in New York, being horrified and begging, ‘Please don’t let it be Muslims,’” she said. “It was a really, really difficult time, I would say, for many Muslims that I knew.”
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon by the Islamic extremist group al-Qaida, resulting in the death of nearly 3,000 people.
The terrorists crashed three hijacked commercial airliners into the buildings, with a fourth plane going down in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
After the attacks, Arab Americans, South Asian Americans, Muslim Americans and Sikh Americans were targeted by misguided people seeking revenge.
In just the week after the attacks, the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow identified 645 bias incidents toward people seemingly of Middle Eastern descent. They included shootings, verbal harassment, violence at places of worship and racist jokes.
Khalaf, who is Muslim, said she has witnessed incidents of discrimination, but the Muslim community in Las Vegas remained vibrant and resilient.
“The Muslim community has definitely gotten more vocal and stronger and really realized that we need to be a part of our community. 9/11 really propelled me to be more civically engaged,” said Khalaf, who is vice president of the Interfaith Council and a board member of local activist group Battle Born Progress. She is also involved with Emerge NV, a group that encourages women to run for political office, and Al-Maun Neighborly Needs, a mosque in Las Vegas.
Pew Research Center found Muslims accounted for approximately 1.1%, or 3.45 million people of all ages, of the country’s total population. This is an increase from 2.35 million in 2007 and 2.75 million in 2011. The Muslim population accounts for less than 1% of adults in Nevada, Pew said.
Khalaf’s eldest son, RJ Khalaf, attended a private Islamic school until his freshman year of high school, when he transferred to the majority-white Coronado High School. His first day of kindergarten at the private school was Sept. 10, 2001.
“It was a very confusing time, but as a kid, I never really understood that there was this larger connection being played out in the media and in politics about my connection as a Muslim and to the events of that day,” RJ Khalaf said. “All I saw at the time, as a kid and even now, was like ‘Wow, this is awful, and this is scary.’”
He said he was the target of anti-Muslim rhetoric growing up, including online comments while he was running for student body president.
Many of his friends were also Muslim, and during his freshman year, he created his high school’s Muslim Students Association, a club to combat stereotypes about Islam and open to students of any faith, he said.
“I think it’s important for us to continue just to be unapologetic and who we are and so that [others] may actually fully understand who we are,” he said. “I really think that my faith, at its core, is a beautiful thing. … If we truly emulated as a community and embraced and didn’t really care so much about making it comfortable for the larger American public to be around us, I think that would ultimately help.”
Shamsuedin Waheed, imam at Masjid Ibrahim mosque in Las Vegas, said Muslims here were exceptionally welcoming.
During the month of Ramadan — a holy holiday that took place in April and May this year and includes daily fasting — Muslim community members congregated at the mosque for prayers in person, the first time since the start of the pandemic, Waheed said. The sense of belonging was rich and lively, he said.
“I think that the Muslim community, in some ways, is used to being vilified,” he said. “We’re basically used to that. And I think that Muslims in general became much ... stronger in the sense of being connected to the wider society.”