9/11 20 years on: What US 'anti-terrorism' wars left behind

Situation of Muslims in the US worsens

Mistrust of Muslims didn't start on 9/11, but it dramatically intensified with the attacks. After 9/11, hate crime cases targeting to Muslims in the US have been rapidly increasing. Many American Muslims have grown up under the shadow of 9/11, facing hostility, suspicion, questions about their faith, doubts over their Americanness.

There is "this sense of being Muslim as a kind of important identity marker, regardless of your relationship with Islam as a faith," says Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago sociologist.

In a survey launched by the Pew Research Center in March 2021, Americans said they believe Muslims are facing "a lot" of discrimination than to say the same about the other religious groups. In 2017, about half of Muslim American adults (48 percent) said they had personally experienced some form of discrimination because of their religion in the previous year.