Mobeen Azhar says British Muslims are still living with the fallout of September 11, 25 years on. In a new documentary, Being Muslim After 9/11, he and Masood Khan document a road trip through Britain’s Muslim communities and the pressures that followed the attacks.
Azhar said he had an overriding sense of dread when production began. He was a student in Leeds when news of September 11, 2001, broke, and he recalled a non-Muslim friend asking him, “Have you seen what your lot have done?”
Leeds in 2001
Azhar said the words “your lot” meant the Muslim community he belonged to. He said many people began to see the world through a tribal lens after September 11, 2001, and that the clash-of-civilisations idea stuck. He also pointed to George Bush’s “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” speech, which he said many people saw as reductive.
That shift shaped more than his reaction to the attacks. Azhar said the American- and British-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq informed his politics and shaped his life, and that he was working at a tiny local newspaper as a student when geopolitics cemented his mission to become a journalist.
Being Muslim After 9/11
Azhar said his early television work included fluffy films about Ramadan and later access pieces about violent extremism. He said he spent years interviewing convicted terrorists in the UK, Lebanon and Pakistan, and that he was shot at by the Taliban while reporting for Panorama.
While filming Being Muslim After 9/11, Azhar met Alyas Karmani, a psychologist and long-standing practitioner in counter-radicalisation. Karmani told him, “They see you as part of the establishment. You need to take some responsibility. Why didn’t we see the reasoned voices? All we saw were these extreme caricatures. We would be shouting at the TV all the time. It was like WWE.”
documentary fallout
Azhar said British audiences had every right to coverage that explored the motivations of people who advocated violence in the name of religion. He also questioned whether the press gave Anjem Choudary a disproportionate platform and whether it did enough to show that his views were at odds with the overwhelming majority of Britain’s Muslim communities and the wider Muslim world.
The documentary lands as the British Muslim Trust says research it published found more than 70 attacks on mosques in the UK over a 12-month period. For viewers, the film ties the 2001 attacks to a present-day record of fear, scrutiny and hostility that has not disappeared with time.
