Thread by @shadihamid

My new essay for @Medium on being Muslim in America in the Trump era:

"Islam has always been my religion, but only recently did it become my identity"

medium.com/s/story/how-do…

Today, Bush is hailed as a statesman for his words of solidarity with the Muslim community after 9/11. But the reality was quite different. This is when American Muslims went into a sort of condemnation fever, something I believe was a mistake

This is a more personal piece. I've said before that I believe America is the best country in the world to be a Muslim today, but that doesn't mean it's easy. We're lucky, though, because we have the freedom to work out pretty complex issues our religion and identity

Obviously, 9/11 changed things. In high school, before terrorism started dominating the headlines, there was someone who would (jokingly) call me a "terrorist." It didn't seem like a big deal then. If anything, I was impressed

medium.com/s/story/how-do…

It might sound naive, but the first time I felt like I had become disembodied—the object of other people's conversations—was in December 2015 after Trump announced his Muslim ban. This was a shift: people were talking about "us" literally all the time, even if it was to defend us