Five years after…
Pakistani student reacts to racial profiling after terrorist attacks
By Rachana Dixit, news editor
Posted on September 11, 2006

Five years later, we haven’t forgotten where we were, or how we felt, when we found out.  Some of us haven’t forgotten the fear.

Sophomore Blair Swanson was a high school freshman in drama class when she heard. Immediately she worried about her stepfather, who worked near the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“I didn’t realize how bad it was,” she said.

For many, the fear and anger that gripped the nation on Sept. 11, 2001 persists today. Specifically for those who call themselves Arab, Muslim or both, that fear still thrives.
According to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, there were 481 incidents of anti-Islamic hate crimes in 2001 versus 28 in 2000. Though the number has slightly leveled off, the data still shows that 156 anti-Islamic hate crimes occurred in 2004. 

A college senior of Pakistani heritage from the D.C.-metro area who was not a victim of hate crime but chose to remain anonymous for various safety reasons, said the combination of events on and after Sept. 11 has undoubtedly shaped who he has become.
Very shortly after the terrorist attacks, having just turned 16 years old, the aforementioned source was returning to the Washington D.C.-area from Atlanta with his high school tennis team.

“We were waiting [in the plane] and I dozed off,” he said. “About two hours later, when I woke up, the plane still hadn’t left. I looked up and there was a guy in a white shirt, black tie and a black suit standing over me.”

He soon realized that the man was an FBI agent and was asked to step off the plane. Two other men, slightly older than himself, were also brought outside.

“I assumed that they were Arab,” he said. However, he did not get to look at the two other men very closely since they were sitting toward the back of the plane. 

Once off the plane, the FBI agent asked him a few basic questions, including what his name was, where he went to school and why he was flying. Eventually, after showing the agent identification, he was let back on the plane.

“The only reason I could tell that they would take me off the plane was because of my name,” he said, which is an Arab name.

Though he said he was allowed to go back fairly easily, the heartbreaking part was stepping on the plane again.

“Everyone was just staring at me,” he said. “It’s really humiliating to have people just stare at you.” He understood why passengers were fearful, given the recent attacks, but he still felt that he was just a 16-year-old boy.

“No one ever wants to make someone fear like that,” he said.

He never saw the two other men come back. In addition, he later found out that a flight attendant refused to come back because he was allowed to sit down.

Since then, he said, he is more cautious so he does not attract attention to himself.
“I think the real change is that even if people aren’t looking at me funny, I would think about it twice,” he said. “Before, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind.”

He said that the United States should have better “PR” to make the country t look better in the public eye. In addition, he thinks popular culture has played a large role in what people think of Arabs and Muslims around the world.

“I think there’s a conception that Muslims aren’t moderate people,” he said. “I’m not religious, but there’s a conception that if you’re religious, you won’t be able to assimilate into society.”

Though many religious extremists from the Middle East say they practice Islam, a 2002 Zogby International Survey shows that 53 percent of Arabs in the United Sates are Christian. The survey shows that 24 percent of Arab Americans are Muslim.

Today, the reverberations of Sept. 11 are still thunderous. Here, its effects have led this college student to be less extroverted, and more careful, than he was five years ago.

“It’s better to just be the boy on campus,” he said. “I’m proud to be Pakistani and proud to be Muslim. But I just want to be another student.”