As someone who grew up in a very recently post 9/11 USA and had to do this myself, I'd like to hear how the rest of you started deconstructing the islamaphobic rhetoric we've been fed our whole lives.
I remember one specific incident, I dont remember anyones name, where a young girl had written a book and was invited on the news to talk about it. She sat down, all excited and happy, about as young as I was, maybe a few years older (I was about 8 or 9, this would have been 2008 or 2009) all ready to share her story and how she had written it with the world. And the woman who interviewed her started it out by asking her "do you condem 9/11"
All the happiness instantly leaked out of her face and was replaced by genuine fear. THEY (the adults) were scaring HER (young child) and everyone expected me to believe they acted like that because muslims are scary and evil. Even at that young age I understood why she would be scared. By asking her if she comdemned it, they subtly implied she has something to do with it. She now has to defend herself against random, unrealistic, ludicrous, unfair claims about a terrorist attack shes too young to personally remember. I knew she HAD to respond to these things calm and measured, she HAD to keep her cool or they'd have painted her as some crazy pyscho. She tried to explain she was to young to remember or have had anything at all to do with this, but the interviewer threw a large and noticeable bitch fit demanding she condemned it verbally. And so she did.
Never once did that interviewer though. Never once do any of them. The grown adults, old enough to have had something to do with it. Old enough to have sent support to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Old enough to have been an informant or a spy. They never condemned him or his actions. In fact as I grew to notice, it was only okay to ask muslim people that, and deeply DEEPLY offensive to even suggest that they the interviewers do.
She never got to talk about her book. The demands of the interviewer wasted all the time.
In less specific examples, I remember random muslim people I saw asked this question on the news or random street interviews would answer calmy and concisely even if their anger was obvious. In an admireable show of self-control they'd keep their cool and not go off on the interviewer.
I always felt it was disrespectfull to the dead to do that. Dragging their memories up and waving them around in the face of these random people because they shared a religion with someone evil. They died horrificly, some people burning, some jumping, many being crushed to death. It didnt need to be treated like a Q&A moment everytime someone had an obviously muslim person in their presence.
Eventually it just began to click that the fall of the twin towers, the hijacking of the planes, the deaths of all 2,996 people wasnt the issue these people had. They cared about loudly hating muslim people and the deaths of those people provided a nice excuse to do it for 20 years publicly.
