Transcript for Khalid Latif, Shattered Silence

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[00:00:08.73] Sorry, you're a lot taller than I am, in case people hadn't noticed. 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.

[00:00:28.27] 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.

[00:00:44.13] And as we were going down the street, we came upon a young boy. He was probably about six years of age. He was wearing a more cultural attire, what we call shalwar kameez. It was like a mint green tea colored kind of thing. And he started to look me up and down.

[00:00:59.14] 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, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], 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.

[00:01:25.42] 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 understand 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.

[00:01:48.57] 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.

[00:02:22.57] Yeah, I did the same thing when we did this in new York. And I was like, I'm not going to do it again. And I did it again.

[00:02:35.33] 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.

[00:02:56.62] 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.

[00:03:27.77] 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.

[00:03:41.73] 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.

[00:04:12.35] Now 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 for my Arabic class. I had overslept like I usually do on my way 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.

[00:04:36.17] 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.

[00:04:50.61] 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 was probably about 10,000 or 12,000 kids standing in the park. And everybody was looking downtown towards where the World Trade Center was.

[00:05:08.22] 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.

[00:05:32.80] 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.

[00:06:04.67] My two roommates at that time were two 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 OK. And even worse, they had no way of getting me out of New York.

[00:06:33.10] 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 have possibly happened to me, or what she thought could've potentially happened to me had I not gotten out of New York.

[00:07:00.26] 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 seven dwarfs, if you want to conceptualize it. When I was in high school, a girl gave me a really giant Sleepy Dwarf, and it looks just like my dad.

[00:07:41.16] 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 synthesize and make critical sense of because over the last year, I hadn't gone out into the world not looking like a Muslim.

[00:08:03.99] 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.

[00:08:26.29] 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.

[00:08:42.98] Girls who wore head scarves 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 shaven them off. Everyone was trying to just, quote unquote, "fit in."

[00:09:01.56] And then there was one young woman who, prior to the 9/11 attacks, she was wearing a head scarf 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-9/11, she had made a decision to still wear her head scarf, but she took off her face veil because she was worried what might happen if somebody saw her dress like that.

[00:09:30.64] 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.

[00:10:02.98] 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.

[00:10:30.21] 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 are still instances that definitely highlight to me the need to go out and still engage and education.

[00:11:06.38] 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 kind of works, we have breakfast with the families. We get in buses, and we go down to a 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's uniform. But at the same time, I still have my beard, and I'm still wearing my cap.

[00:11:50.06] And so this past September, when I'm standing with these families, I was approached by three 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.

[00:12:22.81] 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?

[00:12:38.04] And there was a woman who was standing next to me whose son had passed away on September 11 in 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.

[00:13:19.57] 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 stereotype 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 someplace that I should always be able to stay. Thank you.