How 9/11 impacted a generation of Muslim Canadians

For many Muslim Canadians, including people at this halal food festival in Surrey, B.C., life in Canada got much tougher on September 11, 2001. How does pistachio almonds sound? Kesar Daya is an accountant, dad to three girls, and a volunteer with the Muslim Food Bank. Thank you for your business. He was in grade four when the attacks happened. The only Muslim kid in his school. That really painted a target on my back. I remember like the harsh things that they would say, like, oh, Bin Laden's your uncle. And like, you know, you, like, I lost my friends that day. You lost your friends? I lost, I had no friends after that until like the end of elementary school, basically. He became defensive, got into fights. It was so bad, his family moved and he switched schools. Without September 11, my life would have been totally different. Like, I can't look back and be like, oh, I wish this and that because it's pointless. But I think it definitely had, it made me like, gave me thicker skin because I had to deal with a lot of hate and like being the target. No one knows how many people may be buried under the wreckage of the World Trade Centre. What happened in both the immediate aftermath of the attacks and the two and a half decades of war, surveillance and legislation since shaped the lives of a generation of Muslim Canadians, says Jasmine Zeen, professor of sociology, religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. You know, there's been a collective burden of guilt and punishment that has been laid onto Muslim communities globally, right? Two billion people around the world for the actions of, you know, 19 hijackers 25 years ago. And what I found is that the youth that I studied was that they felt a responsibility to correct that image. Take Hassan Alam. He was 18 in 2001. And for me in that moment, there was a feeling of, I need to really stand up for my community in this moment because things are going to get really bad. Now that I think about this and I say this out loud, it's a ridiculous thing that an 18-year-old has to think about, right? All my friends were just thinking about, what are we going to do Friday night? He joined his Muslim student association and began speaking out against Islamophobia. Good evening. There is a significant development tonight in the Meher Arar case. He was flown by the US to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured. He watched what happened to Meher Arar. That case and others made Alam want to be a lawyer. So I think within me, there was this real rebellion that came up, which is that why? Why do we have to be fearful of simply being Muslim? And at the time, there wasn't many lawyers who looked like me, who had the same name as me, doing the sort of work that needed to be done. In 2016, he helped found an Islamophobia hotline based in this downtown Vancouver office tower. Volunteers connect victims to legal advice. But for all that public advocacy, he only recently started to tell the story of how a CSIS agent visited him in 2003. She said, I'm with CSIS. You don't have to sit here and answer my questions, but I suggest that you do. What was that like? I think the word that comes to mind is fear. They were incredibly invasive, asking me like, tell me about the people who attend your events. Has anyone been praying more than lately? Has anyone traveled abroad lately? Tell me where? I never mentioned names, but even to be asked such invasive questions, I could feel that it was such a violation of my privacy, my rights and my human dignity. Zin says the intimidation of young Muslim activists intensified after 9-11 continues today. It's created this architecture upon which the kind of surveillance that those who are choosing to show solidarity with Palestine are involved in protests and encampments are also facing securitization, they're facing surveillance. Since September 11th, the Canadian Muslim population has grown. Statistics Canada says the portion of the population that reported being Muslim more than doubled from 2% in 2001 to 4.9% in 2021. That includes immigrants who experienced the post-9-11 wars firsthand. Samin Samdi grew up in Afghanistan. He's been in Canada three years and hopes his children will join him soon. How do you think Muslim people are treated in Canada? Very good. Because here is multicultural, everyone is happy here. That's what it feels like to him, what it looks like at festivals like this. But for many, being Muslim in Canada remains influenced still by what happened 25 years ago.