“On one side of the spectrum, the eager “Muslims Are Just Like Us” Muslims optimistically felt that all that was needed was to show White Americans that Muslims were Normal People. Suddenly, there were Muslims on the sides of the street holding signs that said “Hug a Muslim” to try and encourage empathy … Suddenly White people were trying so hard to humanize Muslims for the rest of America and Muslims were trying to humanize ourselves just to survive.

On the “We Can’t Be Boxed In” side, Muslims were organizing spaces for ourselves and being disruptors ... We taught each other how to scrub personal data from the internet so we wouldn’t be doxxed and took extra digital security measures so we wouldn’t be surveilled. When a hate crime happened, we held vigils where we prayed together, read poems out loud to each other, and cried as a community.”