Muslim Racial Identity

After the 9/11 attacks Muslims have faced incredibly difficult barriers including being victims of bullying, proactive aggression, egocentric peers, and also struggling with internalizing tendencies and biracial identity. Depression, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder has been found among a population some call doubted traumatized (Clay, 2011). Although, they have found some strong coping methods that help aid them in how well they handle ongoing discrimination and harassment (Clay, 2011). According to the former editor in chief of the Journal of Muslim Mental Health, prior to 9/11 there was virtually nothing published that related to the mental health of Muslim Americans’ well-being, so determining the impact on Muslims in the

According to Selck R. Sirin, it is tough to be a young Muslim in the United States (Clay, 2011). In one of Sirins studies, published in 2007, eighty four percent of the twelve to eighteen year old Muslim American participants revealed that they had faced at least one act of discrimination in the past year. Most of the young people he has studied are comfortable with their “hyphenated identities” as both Muslims and Americans and they do not feel the need to pick one over the other. Instead of using questions that force participants to choose identity A or B, Sirin uses a series of questions about the degree to which participants identify with their Muslims and American identities. He also uses identity maps, which allow them to express how they feel pictorially. Sixty one percent feel they have hybrid identities, twenty nine feel they have parallel identities that they commute back and forth between, and eleven percent feel they have conflicting identities (Clay, 2011). According the Belsky research suggests having a biracial or multiracial background pushes people to think in more creative, complex ways about life and that seems to be exactly what some of these young Arab- Americans are doing for themselves (Belsky,