Reflections on the Occasion of the Tenth Anniversary of September 11

Abstract

As a sixteen-year-old immigrant to the United States, Shahshahani was awed by America’s reputation as a beacon of freedom and justice. In her return journeys to Iran, she especially boasted about the guarantee of religious freedom to her family and friends. However, the racial discrimination and profiling that many Muslim Americans faced after the September 11 attacks has dramatically changed this story. In this article, Shahshahani tells how the continued denial of due process and religious toleration shown to Muslims in the United States spurred her to action in North Carolina. Now as the director of the National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia, she continues the work of providing representation to Muslim and Middle Eastern communities and helping to empower the communities by providing awareness about their constitutional and human rights.