NYU chaplain calls for a ‘true pursuit of empathy’ to heal from 9/11 aftermath

Khalid Latif: You know, I was actually on my way to a class that starts pretty early in the morning. As I walked into the building, a security guard came to the doorway saying, “We have to evacuate the building. A plane has flown into the World Trade Center.” Moments before, I was cutting through Washington Square Park, which is at the center of NYU’s campus, and it was pretty much empty. And now, I walked into a gathering of about 10 or 12,000 of my fellow NYU students, and we were all standing, looking downtown as the second plane flew into the towers. I returned back to my dorm and I overheard people who lived on the floor with me saying things to the effect of, “We should get all of the Muslims together and send them out of this country so that things like this don’t happen.”

Yeah. We had media from all over the world that was engaging us, wanting to know, “What do Muslims think?” And we now became representative of all Muslims from all backgrounds around the world. And there were just a lot of precautions that we had to take as students at that time. We created a buddy system so that no one would have to walk around on their own who was a Muslim student.

You know, I’ve had a lot of different experiences attached to the tragedies of 9/11, I think, that made it very evident that even this construct of a Muslim American was something now that was coming to the surface that I think exists within this kind of good-bad-type framework, good Muslim, bad Muslim, moderate, extremist. There are very few people who are able to just call themselves American without a hyphen of some kind or a dash that prequalifies their American-ness. And now there became a deep dive into Muslims having to identify just how American they actually were. It became something that was evident, especially within immigrant Muslim communities. I’ve had many members of my community who are from all walks of life tell me that federal law enforcement visits them and their office, has come to their house, they don’t know how to respond. Members of our community who dealt with their homes being raided and family members being tied up for really no reason given to them.

Yeah. So, on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was in 2010, as a chaplain for the police department and participating in the 9/11 memorial service, we would start out the day by having breakfast with family members who lost loved ones on that day. And we’d then take a bus down to the Ground Zero site. And I’m in my police uniform and inspector’s uniform, but I still have a beard, I have my head covered. Three men approached me wearing suits saying that, “Secret Service has spotted you from the top of a building. They want us to check your credentials just in case.” And I said, “Just in case what?” And they said, “We’re sorry that we’re doing this to you.” And I said, “Then why are you doing it?” And you know, to understand what they’re questioning in that moment is not just my physical presence at this location, but the entire validity of my emotion attached to this space, right? Where, I was a student at New York University on Sept. 11 in 2001. I did watch the second plane fly into the towers. I stood at funerals for people of my faith and other walks of life who died on that day. And in that moment, these men are questioning the validity of all of it.

Well, who I got support from was a mother who had lost her son on Sept. 11. She intervened and said to these men that, “What you are doing right now is more dishonorable to the memory of our loved ones that we lost on that day than anything else. That here this young man is standing with us in our moment of need and you’re making it seem as if he’s doing something wrong just because he’s Muslim.” And as easily as they had taken the validation away, she brought it right back.

I think the Muslim community in the United States is a multifaceted community, and the direct engagement that we have with most forms of government tend to put us in a security box or an immigration box, and those boxes alone. I do think that they are still, on an individual level, realities that people face. I think there’s definitely a lot more that can be done to ensure that civil rights, basic human rights, of Muslims in the United States are not things that get curtailed anymore. And not in a place for myself, personally, where I’m worried, for example, that anyone’s going to take my 6-year-old son or my 8-year-old daughter away from me. But I walk out of my house with an understanding that, on any given day, someone might take me away from my family.

You know, we’re coming out of a pandemic, global realities that are geopolitical or things that the world is more aware of now because of social media. There’s opportunity for us to see just how deeply connected and linked we are. And that interdependence is going to be a key factor in us being able to overcome any challenge. But it’s going to take a lot of people being willing to just listen to the lived experiences of those who are different from them, and in a true pursuit of empathy. And I think there are more people who are getting to that place.