Prof. Moustafa Bayoumi on Being Muslim and American During the War on Terror

“How does it feel to be a problem?” This is a question Prof. Moustafa Bayoumi asks in his award-winning book and in a talk he gave at Georgetown on April 25, 2017. In his wide-ranging presentation, he spoke about the “instrumentalization of Islamophobia” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. He explained that Islamophobia existed long before 9/11, but that afterward the government started using it for political purposes. He recounted a story described in his book about “9/11 detainees,” Arab-Muslim families who were held on suspicion of terrorism after the 2001 attacks. The entire event, hosted by Georgetown’s Department of Anthropology and co-sponsored by the Bridge Initiative and other groups, can be viewed below. The live-tweets from the event can be found with the hashtag #BayoumiBridge.