The one thing that's missing from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and I don't imagine we'll see it any time soon, is that there's no memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died because of how the memory of 9/11 was used. Memory is a very interesting thing. We very selectively curate our story and then stop when it begins to tell other people's stories and forces us to accept some kind of culpability. One reason I write is that there's not enough Muslims writing, Pakistanis writing, not enough people of faith writing about the complexities of our experiences.
Haroon MoghulThere are so many stories that need to be told and are not being told. We tend to want to put things in boxes: "This is a memoir about a Muslim," or "This is a memoir about a woman or a normal personal." There's a certain story that assumes to be universal. Everyone else is ethnic fiction. Anyone can aspire to universality.
Haroon MoghulThe one thing that's missing from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and I don't imagine we'll see it any time soon, is that there's no memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died because of how the memory of 9/11 was used. Memory is a very interesting thing. We very selectively curate our story and then stop when it begins to tell other people's stories and forces us to accept some kind of culpability. One reason I write is that there's not enough Muslims writing, Pakistanis writing, not enough people of faith writing about the complexities of our experiences.
Haroon MoghulAfter September 11 there was feeling obligated to respond, and allow other people to set the terms of the conversation. There was this ritualistic condemnation of terrorism. I'm not saying that that's unimportant, but it became the case that the Muslim people in the United States or in other parts of the world were inclusively taking on responsibility for things that they had nothing to do with. Of course, it's very important that a community define its moral boundaries. A community also must acknowledge what it can and cannot control.
Haroon MoghulMy initial fear was that Trump would be something in the order of an American fascist, be militaristic and aggressive. My take on it after the first 100 days is that he's dangerous in a different way. Fascists are dangerous because they're competent people. Trump is incompetent. My fear is not just as an American Muslim, although that's part of it, but as an American who believes very strongly in the idea of a pluralistic, cosmopolitan, transatlantic Western identity. What he's doing to the West and the United States, I don't think the U.S. can recover from this.
Haroon MoghulI think growing up, we always try to make sense of who we are, what we go through, and I grew up in a very religious household. I interpreted what was wrong with me through religious language and I concluded, probably because of a combination of forces around me, that there was something in me that God didn't like or was unhappy with. Since these problems were in large part congenital, that meant that I was doomed from the beginning. I didn't have a chance.
Haroon MoghulWhat I want is to talk about how someone raised Muslim struggles with the same stuff that everyone else theoretically could. Obviously, the particulars are different, but everybody can sympathize with being forced to answer for their identity, the colour of their skin or their religion. A lot of people struggle with mental illness or romance or failed marriages - these are all parts of my own struggle. I read them through the lens of Islam because that's the particular language I grew up in, but the grammar is universal.
Haroon Moghul