Yosra Khalifa was 12 years old on Sept. 11, 2001, the day that rewrote what already would have been a trying coming-of-age period.
“People still would’ve looked at me differently because of my olive skin and my dark hair,” the now 21-year-old Peachtree City woman said.
But after 9/11? “I remember people looking at me and saying, “... I don’t know if we can trust her,’” said Khalifa, who is of Egyptian descent.
Muslim Americans in metro Atlanta and across the country expressed a range of emotions at the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed, from joy to trepidation to relief that a decade-long burden had been lifted.
“A lot of people are relieved because he had harmed the image of Muslims more than anyone in history,” said Soumaya Khalifa, Yosra Khalifa’s mother and founder of the Islamic Speakers Bureau of metro Atlanta. “It is a good thing.”
“I was ecstatic,” Yosra Khalifa said.
Bin Laden was the guiding force behind the most devastating attacks on American soil since Pearl Harbor – assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Muslim leaders in Atlanta on Monday said such action is not of Islam.
“Jihad by the sword has no place in Islam,” said Hazeem Pudhiapura, president of the Georgia chapter of the Ahmabiya Muslim Community, the nation’s oldest Muslim organization.
“His jihad was for political purposes.”
Mansoor Sobree, imam of East Atlanta’s Masjid of Al-Islam, the oldest Islamic community in the metro area, said he heard the news of bin Laden’s death this morning as he prepared for an interfaith meeting with a Catholic parish.
“My first thought: chapter ending,” said the 30-year-old imam. “There is a feeling that this is the end of a very dark chapter.”
Yosra Khalifa recalled learning about the Sept. 11 attacks in her seventh-grade homeroom.
“At first, I didn’t realize the extent of what was going on and how it would affect me as an American Muslim,” she said.
But she said she soon learned, after seeing her older brothers harassed, how her life would change.
“It completely blew my world,” she said. “I don’t think people realize how this one person has affected so many Muslim’s lives.
“He has been the face of evil for so long that, when we try to go about our normal lives, people think we are like him,” said Khalifa, who will graduate Saturday from Georgia State University with a degree in political science. “No such people who believed the same things I believe could ever do anything thing like that.”
“It made me a stronger Muslim and a stronger American,” she continued.
Sunday, a small U.S. strike force helicoptered into bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, attacking al-Qaida operatives inside and killing bin Laden in the ensuing gun fight, White House officials said.
In his address late Sunday night to announce bin Laden’s death, President Barack Obama made a clear distinction between al-Qaida and other Muslims the world over.
“We must also reaffirm that the United States is not – and never will be– at war with Islam,” Obama said. “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.”
Indeed, said Soumaya Khalifa, “Muslims were victims of his hatred. Extremism is a sickness.”
Sobree agreed with President Obama that bin Laden’s killing was justice served.
“Revenge is something that can be harmful,” he said. “To have justice ... that’s what we want. We believe in God’s justice and man’s justice. That’s what this was, an act of justice.”
Still, there remains some trepidation about a world without bin Laden.
“There are concerns in the Muslim world about what’s going to happen next,” Soumaya Khalifa said.
Pudhiapura cautioned against too much celebrating, warning that other Islamic extremist could follow bin Laden’s footsteps.
“Islamic extremism, if left unchecked, can easily change from intolerance to terrorism,” he said.
But Pudhiapura said it is important to remember that Islam promotes honorable qualities, not violence or anarchy.
“We believe in the principles of peace, morality, justice and loyalty,” he said.
Sobree said he hopes bin Laden’s death can open more dialogue between faiths and cultures, adding that the democratic movements that have sprung up across the Middle East have given people a different view of Islam.
“Bin Laden was an anomaly,” Sobree said. “He’s not the Muslim who lives next door.”
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