On the morning of the September 11 World Trade Center attacks in 2001, Khalid Latif was an 18-year-old undergraduate at New York University. During one of several campus evacuations that day, at the top of his dormitory stairway, Latif felt a forceful shove on his shoulders. Turning around, he faced the anger-stricken face of a fellow student who had attempted to push him down the stairs. Latif had already heard students voicing anti-Muslim sentiments that morning, and says he believes his visible identity as a Muslim made him a target.
Now 33 and one of the nation’s most outspoken Muslim leaders, Latif says he knew that day that life for Muslims in America would never be the same. Today, as chaplain and director of the Islamic Center at NYU, Latif says he has seen anti-Muslim sentiment surge in this election cycle to a level unmatched since 9/11. The presumed Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has pledged to temporarily ban Muslims from even entering the U.S. and regaled audiences with grisly stories of mass executions of Muslim prisoners. Texas senator and erstwhile presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has called for police to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are now five times more common than they were before the September 11 attacks.