Khalid Latif – The Moth Presents Shattered Silence

Welcome Imam Khalid Latif.

So when I was about 12 years old,

my brother and I went to Pakistan to

visit my grandmother after my grandfather had passed

away.

And at 12 years of age, I looked

a lot different from what I look like

right now.

We were walking down the street and I

was wearing my Timberland boots. I had on

some baggy jeans. I had really long Pantene

Pro V kind of hair.

I was wearing a white baseball hat backwards.

I definitely didn't look like I belonged there.

And as we were going down the street,

we came upon a young boy, he was

probably about 6 years of age, he was

wearing a more cultural attire, what we call

shawwarkemies.

It was like a mint green tea colored

kind of thing and he started to look

me up and down

and when we got closer,

he definitely let me know that I didn't

belong where I was.

He craned his head backwards and screamed on

the top of his lungs to everybody who

was listening to him, gay, Michael Jackson, I

get that Michael Jackson is here. And then

he and his friends started to chase me

up and down the street because they thought

I was Michael Jackson.

And I'm definitely not Michael Jackson.

And now 15 years later, when I think

back to that time, it definitely makes me

laugh, but it also makes me think a

little bit.

This kid, the way that he saw me

dressed,

the way that he kind of understood me

to be was something that one could say

maybe was his idea of an American,

but it was definitely his idea of something

that was not Pakistani.

And for me, if I didn't fit in

there in the country where my parents came

from

and it was really difficult for me to

figure out how to fit in here where

I was born,

I didn't really know where I belonged.

Where was I supposed to go?

Now, when I was entering into my freshman

year at New York University,

I really didn't have any intention of being

part of any kind of organized Islamic activity.

Which sounds pretty bad when you say it

like that.

Yeah. I did the same thing when we

did this in New York, and I was

like, I'm not gonna do it again. And

I did

it

again.

And so

for whatever reason, I went and sought out

the Muslim Student Organization

thinking that the kind of people I would

meet would be like people I grew up

with who were Muslim.

My dad, he's a doctor, he was from

Pakistan.

Most of the Muslims we interacted with growing

up happened to be doctors and their families

who were Pakistani

and when I went to this student organization's

meeting at NYU,

I was pretty astonished because the first Muslim

that I met was not somebody who was

South Asian like me

but he was Indonesian, he had a scraggly

beard, he was carrying a surfboard in his

hand, and it was just really strange for

me to conceptualize,

especially because we were in Manhattan and he

was carrying a surfboard in his hand,

but I had never met a Muslim

who was Indonesian before.

Now when I walked into the room where

the meeting was taking place,

I saw Muslims who were definitely Arab and

Muslims who were South Asian,

but I also saw Muslims who were black,

Muslims who were white, I even saw a

lot of people who weren't Muslim

And for the first time, I got to

actually see really how deep and diverse the

religion of Islam can actually be.

In that year, my religious identity or the

component of my identity that was aligned to

my religion, it began to cement itself a

little bit stronger.

It began to externally manifest itself a little

bit. I grew out my beard,

I started to cover my head,

and the way I started to look was

a little bit more stereotypically

the way a Muslim would look.

Now, when I was going into my sophomore

year, I was running through Washington Square Park,

which is in the middle of NYU's campus,

a little bit late from my Arabic class.

I had overslept like I usually do on

my way to to classes in the morning

and when I walked into the classroom,

my professor wasn't really teaching and all the

students were talking to one another and I

had no idea what was going on.

A few minutes after I got there, a

security guard came to the door and he

said everybody please get all your belongings, make

sure to not leave anything here, we need

to evacuate the building, a plane has flown

into the World Trade Center.

I then left from the building with my

classmates and we went back into Washington Square

Park, which just a few moments before had

been completely empty and now there's probably about

10 or 12000 kids standing in the park.

And everybody was looking downtown towards where the

World Trade Center was.

Everyone was speaking to one another, there was

a lot of commotion,

and as we stood there, we were suddenly

struck by this really awesome silence

because a second plane then flew into the

building.

What felt like an eternity, but was actually

moments,

soon just passed by and as instantaneous as

the silence came about,

it was shattered and people started to run

everywhere.

I went into my dormitory

and I started to hear conversations of people

who were living in my building who didn't

know that I was within earshot and they

were saying things to the effect of we

need to get all the muslims together

and send them out of this country because

they're all violent and they're all terrorists.

And when they saw that I was there

and I could hear what they were saying,

they got really quiet.

And I said to them, you shouldn't stop

on my account. If you actually believe it

and you mean it, you should keep going.

My 2 roommates at that time were 2

of my friends who were Hindu and they

wouldn't let me walk around by myself.

There was a young woman who lived in

my building who actually tried to push me

down the staircase.

It was a really really tough situation.

My parents, they were feeling it very hard

because they lived in New Jersey

and they had no way of knowing if

I was okay

and even worse, they had no way of

getting me out of New York.

When I was finally able to get out

of the city, I got on a train,

I took it to Edison where I grew

up,

and as I was going into the parking

lot of the train station,

my sister ran out of the car and

she hugged me in front of everybody in

the parking lot with tears running down her

face because she was so worried at what

could've possibly happened to me or what she

thought could've potentially happened to me had I

not gotten out of New York.

We got back home

and my father sat me down and he

said that when you go back to New

York,

I would prefer if you didn't cover your

head anymore.

My father, he's a pretty religious guy from

certain standards, he's got a big white beard,

he himself covers his head, he started to

do it after my brother had started doing

it when he went for his undergrad when

he was about 18.

He kind of looks like one of the

7 dwarves if if you want to conceptualize

it,

right?

When I was in high school,

you know, a girl gave me a really

giant sleepy dwarf,

and it looks just like my dad.

So now,

this man who looks like sleepy is sitting

me down in our living room

and he's saying to me,

don't cover your head.

And it was a real challenging

kind of thought for me to to synthesize

and make critical sense of

because over the last year I hadn't gone

out into the world not looking like a

Muslim.

And my parents they were always encouraging me

and pushing me to do some of these

things and now they were sitting down at

a time when people had questions about Islam

and they wanted to know what the religion

actually stood for, they were telling me we

would feel a little bit more comfortable

if you just kind of blended in and

didn't let people know that you were a

Muslim.

And so since my father was asking me,

I did what he told me to do.

Classes started again, I went back to NYU,

and I walked into my Arabic class

and I saw that a lot of my

classmates,

they had tried to blend in as well.

Girls who wore headscarves were now wearing hoodie

sweatshirts,

some of them were wearing turtlenecks and had

wrapped bandanas around their heads, a lot of

guys who had very long beards had trimmed

their beards down, some had even completely shaving

them off.

Everyone was trying to just

fit in.

And then there was one young woman who,

prior to the 911 attacks,

she was wearing a headscarf

to cover her hair

but under her own volition, she also chose

to wear a face veil so that all

you could see of her face were her

eyes.

And now, post 911,

she had made a decision to still wear

her headscarf,

but she took off her face veil because

she was worried what might

happen if somebody saw her dressed like that.

And for the first time, I was able

to look into this girl's face and she

looked back into my face and I really

felt so wretched

that here I was hiding who I am

and blending in

and this young woman alone was there representing

my faith and my tradition

to everyone

who wanted an answer as to why what

had just happened a couple of weeks before

had actually happened and I was letting her

do it by herself.

And so I made a decision

that I would no longer hide who I

am,

that I would make a point to not

just play the part,

but also look the part to the best

of my ability.

And that if somebody had a question that

they wanted answered,

I would take

full responsibility

of telling my story and my narrative

and not letting somebody else define for others

what I actually am.

These days, I work as a university chaplain

at New York University,

I also work as a chaplain for the

New York City Police Department,

and I'm regularly

invited to gatherings like this, to the media,

to do interviews, where I answer questions about

Islam and I try to deconstruct a lot

of the negative stereotypes

that people associate with my tradition.

And more often than not, the response that

I get is one that's very welcoming

but there's still instances

that definitely highlight to me the need to

go out and still engage and educate.

This past September,

I stood with the families

of individuals

who had passed away on 9 11

some 10 years ago now,

and I've been doing this in my role

as a New York City Police Department chaplain,

since I started working with the NYPD,

the way it kinda works, we have breakfast

with the families,

we get in buses and we go down

to special area that's reserved for these families

near the stage and near the ground zero

site

and during the day, in its entirety, I'm

wearing my police uniform it's an inspector uniform

but at the same time, I still have

my beard

and I'm still wearing my cap.

And so this past September, when I'm standing

with these families,

I was approached by 3 individuals who were

wearing suits,

who asked me to show them my police

credentials

to just ensure that I actually worked for

the NYPD.

They said that Secret Service spotted you from

the top of a building

and they asked us to come and ask

you, just in case.

Just in case.

And I said to him, just in case,

what?

And the one guy said, I'm really sorry

that

we're doing this to you.

And I said to him, then why are

you doing it?

And there was a woman who was standing

next to me whose son had passed away

on September 11, 2001,

and she said to me,

I'm sorry that they're doing this to you

also,

that

what they're doing to you right now

is more dishonoring

of the memory of my son who I

lost on that day,

and the fact that

you as a Muslim are able to stand

with us here and remember those who we

lost is not just an act of compassion

but it's an act of courage as well.

And we most definitely appreciate the fact that

you are willing to stand with us in

our moment of need.

And so for me, it gave me a

sense of promise and a sense of hope

that as much as there were still people

who were only willing to look at what

they stereotyped me to be, at what they

preconceived me to be, and understand me in

that way,

and tell me that I don't have a

place to be here and I need to

be somewhere else,

there were still individuals

who were willing to say to me that

I most definitely belong here and this place

where I was born is some place that

I should always be able to stay. Thank

you.