AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): For many of the approximately 100,000 Muslims now living in the Long Island region of New York State, the September 11, 2001 attacks, carried out by 19 al-Qaeda hijackers, cast an unwelcome and heavy gaze upon them.
Muslims in the Long Island region, who spoke with the American newspaper Newsday on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, recalled the pain and suffering they experienced during that period. Many of them were American citizens, fully integrated into the country's society, but suddenly, in their own words, they were treated as enemies.
They spoke of hearing shocking remarks and even threats of violence on the streets. Sometimes these threats came from neighbors who had previously been their friends. This experience shattered their sense of security and acceptance in society.
The individuals interviewed emphasized that they were unjustly held responsible for a terrorist attack whose perpetrators they did not consider followers of their religion at all, as killing human beings contradicts the fundamental teachings of Islam. A relative of one of the Long Island Muslims was also imprisoned for 17 years on terrorism charges, charges that were eventually dropped.
Daisy Khan, a Muslim and member of the board of directors of the Long Island Multi-Faith Institute, which works for interfaith dialogue, said, "The entire religion of Islam was somehow linked to a terrorist act, and this was very painful for Muslims. Fear and anxiety were formed about their place in America and their sense of belonging to this country."
According to FBI statistics, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes across the United States rose from 29 in 2000 to 499 in 2001 after September 11. The organization had stated that this increase was likely a result of the horrific events that occurred on September 11.
But the Muslims interviewed by Newsday say there is now a process of healing underway in Long Island and other parts of America.
This summer, a Suffolk County Police detective sergeant visited the site of a new mosque in Shirley after hateful slogans were spray-painted there.
Sergeant Matthew DeMatteo responded to the incident by saying, "We won't allow that."
Islamophobia has not disappeared from Long Island, but the Muslims in the region who spoke with Newsday say that 25 years after September 11, significant progress has been made.
Daisy Khan said, "Twenty-five years later, the story of American Muslims is not a story of failed integration, but a story of successful integration. Because today you see many Muslims active as social and civic activists, even running for public office. Despite the discrimination they have faced."
What follows are the accounts of some of them.
Targeted
Nayyar Imam, a longtime leader of the region's Muslim community, recalls that just hours after the terrorist attacks, the windshield of his hijab-wearing cousin's car was smashed at the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove.
The next day, when they took the car for repair to Port Jefferson, the owner of the glass company noticed a tourist brochure for Boston in the back seat of the car. Boston was the city from which some of the hijackers who crashed their planes into the World Trade Center towers had departed.
When Imam and his relatives later went to pick up the car, Suffolk County police were waiting for them. The business owner had called the police.
A few days later, two FBI agents entered a pharmacy owned by Imam in Coram to ask about one of his employees.
According to Imam, these events reflected the suspicion that many Long Island Muslims said they faced in the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks.
Imam, now 71, said, "I was very scared at that time. The whole community was scared."
He had emigrated from Pakistan to America as a pharmacist in 1982, and after studying at Long Island University in Brooklyn, he obtained his professional license.
According to him, some Muslims shaved their beards and stopped using Muslim names. Some women also took off their hijab.
Imam decided to keep his family at home and only go out when necessary.
Two months later, when he finally decided to leave the house, he was walking with his wife and three young children on the streets of Manhattan when a driver rolled down his window and shouted, "Why don't you go back where you came from?"
Imam says he felt embarrassed for his children and, to shield them from the reality, told them that the man meant they should go back to Long Island.
A quarter-century later, the lives of Muslims in Long Island have improved, and they no longer face many of the everyday humiliations of the past, but Imam believes a shadow still hangs over their lives that may take decades to disappear.
He said, "Today things are more or less good. But we are still in a sensitive position... you feel discrimination, although it is much less."
In 2011, Imam was appointed as the first Muslim chaplain for the Suffolk County Police Department. An event that, according to him, was a sign of progress.
But around the same time, as he and others were trying to establish a mosque in Mount Sinai, a number of residents opposed the plan at public meetings. The mosque eventually received approval.
In 2024, dozens of Muslims attended Ramadan prayers at the Mount Sinai Islamic Center.
Imam says it took 15 years for him and others to finally get permission to establish a Muslim cemetery in Suffolk County.
He also pointed to a plan to open an Islamic boarding school at a former Catholic boarding school in Bay Shore, which was met with strong opposition from some residents this summer.
In August, someone wrote anti-Islamic slogans on a sign at the site of a mosque in Shirley. In April, similar slogans were written on signs near a mosque in Deer Park.
Imam says many Long Island Muslims are professionals working in hospitals and universities, but this is not enough to convince some people.
He said, "We are very educated and professional in Long Island. Yet, we are not accepted."
A Destroyed Family
Sarwat Paracha still cries when she talks about her cousin, a man who spent 17 years in prison on terrorism charges, but the US government eventually dropped the case and he was released.
Paracha, 58, a resident of West Hempstead, said, "The way they portrayed him as a monster was really painful for us. The whole family was destroyed."
Her cousin, Uzair Paracha, was arrested in Brooklyn in 2003. Prosecutors accused him, then 23, from a prominent and wealthy family in Pakistan, of sympathizing with al-Qaeda.
In 2005, he was convicted of attempting to help an al-Qaeda operative fraudulently obtain immigration documents to enter the United States and carry out a terrorist attack.
But the conviction was overturned in 2018. Judge Sidney H. Stein of the US District Court in Manhattan ruled that new evidence had raised doubts about Uzair Paracha's guilt.
The judge said that continuing his conviction would be a clear injustice.
Stein ordered a new trial, but prosecutors dropped the case in 2020. They said they did not believe the new evidence proved Paracha's innocence, but it was not feasible to review 14,000 classified documents before the trial date.
The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which handled the case, declined to comment.
According to media reports, Paracha agreed in confidential negotiations with the US government before the case was closed to surrender his permanent residency status in the United States and return to his native Pakistan.
His lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, said at the time, "His record has been cleared, and he returns to his home in Pakistan as a free and innocent man."
But Sarwat Paracha says this ordeal has left permanent scars on her and other family members.
She said, "Nothing can compensate for the years he spent, and the years we spent."
She added, "We live in open fear, because we are afraid that because of this incident, anything could happen."
Paracha recalled visiting her cousin at the Terre Haute prison in Indiana, as well as in Brooklyn.
Uzair Paracha's father, Saifullah Paracha, was a wealthy businessman who was also arrested by US authorities in 2003 in connection with the same case. He spent nearly two decades in US custody, most of it at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
He was never charged with a crime.
The Periodic Review Board for detainees approved his release in 2022, and he also returned to Pakistan.
Sarwat Paracha said, "My uncle and Uzair were portrayed as terrorists, while they are the sweetest people I know. They are the kindest people I know. They have very big hearts."
She says after their arrest, many of her friends abandoned her and her family, thinking they were part of a terrorist group. "They immediately cut off their relationship with you."
She and her family also became targets of anti-Muslim sentiment.
Paracha says that while standing in line at a pharmacy with family members, wearing hijab, they heard people behind them shouting insults and saying, "Go back home."
She said, "I had nothing to do with September 11, but I felt like a criminal... you felt a lot of pressure, you felt very insecure. At that time, Muslims were blamed. Even today, if something happens, we are the first ones to be looked at as the bad guys."
For years, her husband was held and interrogated for hours at airports, including John F. Kennedy International Airport, upon returning from foreign trips.
The situation got so bad that other family members would usually go back home in West Hempstead and later return to Kennedy Airport until he was released.
Despite everything, Paracha says that 25 years later, she generally feels accepted and treated with respect in her neighborhood.
She said, "I feel very safe, and the neighbors are very respectful. Still, I am cautious about going to some areas."
She added, "Even today, Muslims do not feel safe in neighborhoods where we feel we are not welcomed."
The Terrorist Label
Muhammad Rashid was fascinated by America from the day he arrived from Pakistan in 1990.
He earned an MBA from St. John's University, found a good job at a pharmaceutical company focused on cancer drugs, and eventually settled with his wife and children in Syosset. One of his children graduated from Harvard Law School.
But everything changed on September 11, 2001. That evening, while still living in Queens, he was leaving to get into his car when a neighbor whom Rashid considered a friend made a racist remark about Arabs and threatened violence against them while passing by.
He said it loud enough to ensure Rashid heard it.
Rashid, who considered the remark an indirect threat, said, "It was shocking, because I had known this person for four or five years."
But according to him, this was just the beginning. After the family moved to Long Island in 2003, the taunts spread to his children at school, where other students called them terrorists.
Rashid said, "It had become normal to call Muslim children terrorists."
In 2011, nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks, US forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
In the school hallway, a student made a degrading remark about Rashid's son.
Rashid says, "Before September 11, what a wonderful experience I had in America. I never wanted to go back to Pakistan, because I love this country. This country has given me so much."
Rashid traveled frequently for work, but after the attacks, he was almost always pulled out of security lines for additional screening, a humiliating experience that often happened in front of his colleagues and sometimes lasted over half an hour.
He is now 62 and a US citizen. He said, "You feel like a second-class citizen."
Rashid was disgusted by the terrorist attacks and said they contradicted the fundamental principles of Islam.
Referring to Islamic teachings about the sanctity of human life, he said, "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a just cause, such as punishment for murder, is as if he has killed all of humanity."
He said about the terrorists, "The actions of a few individuals were pinned on the entire community."
Rashid has participated in interfaith activities at the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, activities that allow followers of other religions to better understand Muslims.
He is now the elected president of the mosque and also serves on its executive committee.
Rashid says he once again feels supported by his neighbors and colleagues. He is no longer stopped at airports.
He also sees the election of a Muslim, Zohran Mamdani, as mayor of New York City last November as another sign of progress.
Still, Rashid sees concerning signs in Long Island, including the hateful slogans painted at the site of the new mosque in Shirley.
Despite this, he says, "Most people are good people."
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