Correction: The original version of this article contained an error. The Islamic school of Neyamatullah Akbar’s friend had to be shut down.

Hana Khan’s parents dropped her off at her Islamic school in Santa Clara on Sept. 11, 2001. They were told to return home because classes had been cancelled for the day.

After a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, there had been bomb threats to the school.

Returning home, Khan’s family immediately turned on the television and watched the rest of the day’s events unfold. The images were terrifying, Khan said.

That same day in Fort Collins, Colo., Naseem Golestani came home from school to a grim warning from her mother, who had been glued to the television all day: “Brace yourself. Things are going to get really, really bad for Muslims in America.”

Ten years later, Golestani and Khan are students at UCLA, majoring in political science and geography and environmental science, respectively.

But as Golestani’s mother predicted, they – and other Muslim students – have had to live with the effects of the attacks that day 10 years ago.

Changing perceptions

After 9/11, some schoolmates began to tease Golestani, who is of Iranian descent, by calling her “Saddam Hussein’s daughter.”

These comments were especially hurtful – the Iranian neighborhood Golestani’s mother lived in had been the target of air bombings conducted by Hussein’s forces in the 1980s.

Being Muslim in post-9/11 America became increasingly difficult, Khan said. Her patriotism and loyalty to the country were always questioned by other Americans.

“I felt alienated. Not by any comment or action, but just by what was going on,” Khan said. “I always had to defend myself and prove that I’m with America.”

In public places, some Muslim students began to feel a sudden change in the way they were treated.

“People would always look at us passing by, our non-Muslim friends started looking at us differently, and we lost some of them,” said Bayan Abusneineh, a third-year political science student.

Neyamatullah Akbar, a second-year biology student, said his friend’s Islamic school had to be shut down. He feared he would be put in an internment camp because of his religion, he said.

“That’s what was in the air, that fear of not knowing what’s going to happen in the future,” Akbar said.

Fostering understanding

Ten years after the events of 9/11, Akbar said he feels there is still a fear or hate of Islam – an “Islamophobia” – by some parts of the population who don’t truly understand the religion.

“Before 9/11, America didn’t know what it was like to be Muslim, and saw Islam as a foreign attack,” Akbar said.

That day was a turning point for his life and for his generation, he said.

“For older Muslims, they understand what it meant to be Muslim before and after 9/11,” Akbar said. “For us, this defined how we’re supposed to live.”

Muslim stereotypes, such as portrayals as plane hijackers in movies, were present in American society before but were heightened by 9/11, said Jihad Saafir, a 30-year-old imam who sometimes leads Friday prayers for the Muslim Student Association.

But 9/11 also sparked a revitalization in some Muslims’ faith, Akbar and Saafir said. The younger generations became more involved in activism and teaching others about Islam, said Khan.

Saafir, who works with interfaith groups, said the support and communication between Muslims, Jews and Christians has increased in the last 10 years. Islamic religious leaders have begun incorporating the religion into mainstream American society and preaching a more multicultural and inclusive message, he added.

The hidden wisdom of 9/11 was that it brought people together and made them understand each other better, Saafir said. While there have been episodes of hate, Muslims have also received strength and support from fellow Americans, Akbar said,

A better future

In post-9/11 America, a generation of Muslim students compare their hardships to the struggles of other minority groups, like blacks, Catholics and the Irish. They see a better future for the next generation of American Muslims.

But students like Akbar and Khan said they will never forget the events of that day when their country was attacked and so many people died.

“We mourn the citizens of this country who died that day, our brothers and sisters in humanity,” said Akbar, who immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh when he was five. “The people that died that day shouldn’t have died. Muslims died that day too.”

Khan said she’ll never forget the pain and fear she got from watching people jump out of the towers – an image that still leaves her speechless 10 years later.

“On that day, I was attacked as an American as well.”