A Community of Our Own:
South Asian Muslims-Americans After 9/11
Senior Honors Thesis Project by Muskaan Siddique
Following 9/11, South Asian Muslims in the United States struggle with the disclosure of identity, isolation, and discrimination after the flooding of islamophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment by mainstream media. Unfortunately the consequences of 9/11 negatively impacted the South Asian and Muslim population and led to the racialization of these groups. The word ‘Muslim’ and the appearance of brown skin, beards, and turbans became synonymous with terrorism due to media’s and U.S. government’s reaction to 9/11. The ‘War on Terror’ essentially was the ‘War of Terror’ for South Asians, Muslims, and immigrants in the United States as night raids, surveillance, and hate crimes explicitly targeted these groups. Today, South Asian Muslim-American youth find themselves playing identity politics while simultaneously trying to navigate the liminal spaces their Muslim-American and South Asian-American status confines them to in a post 9/11 world.
A Community of Our Own is a thesis podcast hosted by University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign senior, Muskaan Siddique. Muskaan Siddique examines the change over time regarding the reactions to South Asian Muslim-Americans through the analysis of academic journals, media outlets, U.S. legislation, and oral histories. The podcast, however, specifically draws from several oral histories from South Asian Muslim-Americans in Elgin and uses the interviews as the primary source of research. In addition to a podcast series available on Spotify, this website serves as an online exhibit for listeners and denizens of Elgin. Each of the tabs host a myriad of information from interviewee bios to community resources. Alternative text is present for each image. Podcast Episodes are on their way. For now, please read the transcripts found on the 'Episodes' tab!
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AuthorMuskaan Siddique (she/her) is a senior history student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Muskaan grew up in Elgin and is a member of the South Asian Muslim Community herself. |