Khalid Latif – The Moth Presents Shattered Silence
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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.