Muslim children were not born carrying the weight of 9/11. Society placed it on their shoulders. It is time for us to take it off.

As a child, I was called a "camel queen" by my teachers. Years later, while I was pregnant, a college professor looked at my stomach and joked in front of the whole class that I might have a "bomb" under there.

He was talking about my unborn child.

What has stayed with me all these years is not only the cruelty of the remark. It was where it happened. The comment came from a professor, in a classroom, an environment that should have been a place of learning, respect, and safety.

I hear from young people who become anxious when classroom discussions turn to terrorism or September 11. Not because they do not want to learn history, but because they worry the conversation will somehow become about them.

In that moment, I was not seen as a student, a mother-to-be, or a human being. I was seen through the lens of a vicious stereotype.

That moment taught me something I have never forgotten: Anti-Muslim prejudice is not always loud or obvious. Sometimes it appears as a joke. Sometimes it appears as an assumption. Sometimes it appears in the expectation that Muslims must constantly prove that they are not what others fear they might be.

My experience is not unique. In May, a 12-year-old Muslim student in Connecticut was reportedly subjected to repeated harassment and called anti-Muslim names. In a sign of the times, the Danbury Police Department searched the family’s home for weapons after allegations were made against the student.

In a 2025 survey of Muslims, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), found, “Forty-seven percent of Muslim families with school-aged children report having a child who faced religious-based bullying in the past year, compared with 23% among the general public.”

Like many Muslim children, I learned early what it felt like to be viewed as different, foreign, or less worthy. Those experiences leave scars that are difficult to explain to people who have never lived them.

Today, I see those same burdens carried by Muslim students.

I hear from young people who become anxious when classroom discussions turn to terrorism or September 11. Not because they do not want to learn history, but because they worry the........

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