I was born on November 8, 2001, one month and twenty-seven days after 9/11. This left a cloud of ignorance over my head, and for that, I would like to apologize. Growing up post-9/11 meant that I only heard the word Muslim attached to the word terrorist. Muslim was the butt of a joke that I did not understand but yet I felt that I was able to make this joke. I was in fourth grade the first time I had was taught that a Muslim was not a something bad. I pointed at my older brother and said “Muslim” and hid under a table. I giggled thinking that I was clever and funny, my nine-year-old self not understanding how hurtful that could be and the ignorance that this displayed. My brother looked at me and told me that Muslim was not a bad thing and that it is not a dirty word. Being nine years old I didn 't understand, Muslim had killed people, weren’t they bad? This is a question I had never asked and a lesson that i had forgotten until a couple years later. I was 10 years old when Osama Bin Laden was killed. We didn’t know what he did or who he was but attached to his name was the word Muslim. Muslim and terrorist. Once again they were together and once again they were portrayed in a light that distorted their features turning them into something ghastly, something to be afraid of. So when my friends made jokes …show more content…
They were Muslim. Once again those two words were together, Muslim and terrorist, so that’s what they all were. In eighth grade, we learned about Islam, and here it was that I was truly exposed to the ignorance and bigotry of the world I had been living in. I learned of Allah and prayers. I learned the beauty of Islam. I am a Christian, we both have a God, we both have prayers, but only one of us is largely discriminated against. I would like to apologize for the ignorance that i had, and for the disrespect I had towards something that I had not even known of, let alone