While seated in the emergency exit row of a plane, Sediqe said the man immediately behind her laughed and mockingly said, “I hope this goes well, and we all get there safely.”

“People are nervous about you being Muslim and some may make small snide remarks,” Sediqe said. “This was not as big an issue before 9/11. Muslims are now self-conscious about traveling.”

The suspicions that fuel these prejudices have become deep-seated, and Muslims who have grown up in the shadow of 9/11 have had to contend with its legacy in nearly every aspect of their lives.

When she was younger, one of Sediqe’s teachers posed a question before her entire class that illustrates the contemporary Muslim experience.

“‘Why didn’t your people condemn 9/11?’

I thought this was an interesting question to bring up in class for debate, to say the least,” Sediqe said. “Subtle discriminatory instances like this can occur in various educational spaces. At the time I was pretty confident in who I was, but for another student, this could have had a profound negative impact.

WEARING THE HIJAB

Ten days before airplanes pummeled into the World Trade Center, Akam began to wear a headscarf, or hijab. For ten days she wore the religious covering, but after the attacks her mother forbade her to wear the hijab.

After a number of headscarf-clad women in her community were harassed—including a close family friend who was stalked until she removed her headscarf—Akam’s mother told her daughter that out of concern for her safety she should not wear the hijab.

Akam says her mother, who wore a headscarf before 9/11, refused to remove her own hijab after the attacks.

Fearing for her mother’s safety, Akam and her sisters were appointed her guardians.

“People yelled things at her as she was walking, like ‘rag head’ or ‘terrorist,’” Akam said.

Despite observing her mother’s struggles after 2001 and her sister’s initial disapproval, Akam began wearing the hijab the summer after her freshman year at Harvard. She arrived at her hometown airport wearing the hijab.

“My sisters thought I would hurt my job opportunities, saying it would be hard to do research in lab with headscarf on, but they were later accepting of my decision,” Akam said.

While she has found people in Cambridge generally accepting of her practice to wear the hijab, she has also confronted intolerance.