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Dr. Jasmine Gani, a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, sits down with us for a deeply moving conversation about her journey through the academy, as a student and a teacher, as well as her experiences with community organizing. Our discussion was so wide-ranging that we had to split it into two parts!In Part 1, we talk about confronting the open and extreme hostility against Muslims after 9/11, university life, being thrust into activism, and how we can find support and friendship in unexpected places.References:Read Jasmine’s brilliant article on how Europe's militarism is rooted in the racialisation of Islam and Muslims, and how that's internalised by postcolonial states like Syria.Find Jasmine’s other work on her blog.Follow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com. Support the show.Hosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Khadija KhalilConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty

Anisa presents a brief oral history of Islamophobia in the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We often reference "what Muslims went through" but what exactly did that involve? We cover the big stuff, the little stuff, and how it all formed the epicenter of a global campaign of terror and violence that targeted over a billion people. Including: the ideological framing of a political phenomenon, the state's exclusive right to kill, and the two sides of American exceptionalism. References:The long costs of Islamophobia by Anisa KhalifaCitations Needed on whitewashing Colin Powell's legacy and their excellent series on anti-Muslim racism in Hollywood: Part I Part II Part IIIBarbara Lee’s speech on September 14, 2001, as she voted against the invasion of AfghanistanSecret evidence and extraordinary rendition to CIA black sites, where people were detained and tortured before being put in Guantanamo Bay: One prisoner's recent testimony George W. Bush’s now infamous address on September 20, 2001: "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists"The FBI's COINTELPRO-like program of entrapment targeting ordinary Muslims(Anisa regrets to say that, despite declaring she will never forget it, she in fact misquoted the statistic that 53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016.)Follow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com. Support the show.Hosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Khadija KhalilConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty

Dr Mona Masood is a psychiatrist and founder of the Physician Support Line. She talks to us about the emotional fallout of our post-9/11 lives and the power of going small, whether western psychiatry has the answers for Muslim problems, and how to deal with people who hate you. We also look at what's behind our impulse to divide people into heroes and villains, and how that affects the way we treat them. (Did we lowkey just get some therapy? I feel like we did.)Follow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com. Support the show.Hosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Anisa KhalifaConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty

G. Willow Wilson, author and co-creator of Ms. Marvel, joins us to talk navigating Muslim identity over the last twenty years, as some things have changed and others have stayed the same. We cover how her journey to Islam was interrupted by 9/11, her gorgeous memoir on life in Egypt, the intense fear our communities lived under as our men were disappeared, and how Islam has inspired her work—including Kamala Khan's excellent superhero philosophy.References:Ms. Marvel and The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow WilsonThe Prophet Muhammad's saying about how to fight the evil around usFollow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com. Support the show.Hosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Anisa KhalifaConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty

Zahra Billoo is a civil rights lawyer, activist and Executive Director of CAIR-SFBA, where she leads a team dedicated to the empowerment of American Muslims through legal services, legislative advocacy, and community organizing. We had a great time talking to her about waking up to a new world twenty years ago, how her faith forms the backbone of her advocacy, and why we have to stand against injustice even when we're not its targets. (Many mics were dropped.)Follow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com. Support the show.Hosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Khadija KhalilConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty

In this first episode, we relive that terrifying day twenty years ago, and discuss why we’re doing this oral history/sociology project/group therapy session, who it's for (hint: everyone), and what we want to achieve. Follow us on Twitter. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com.References:Covering Islam and Culture and Imperialism by Edward SaidAdam's WorldHosts and Producers: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilEditor: Khadija Khalil

Coming September 11: Twenty years after 9/11, producers and hosts Anisa Khalifa and Khadija Khalil explore what it meant to come of age when we did. With a lineup of amazing guests who, like us, grew up Muslim in the shadow of 9/11, we’ll dig into how that changed the trajectories of our lives, and how the experience differed either side of the Atlantic. Muslim in Plain Sight features interviews with artists, activists, academics, religious leaders, and more. As a generation, we were just discovering our own voices when they were suddenly silenced from mainstream narratives. Instantly, we became both invisible and hypervisible. Our conversations here are a small attempt to remedy that erasure. Join us as we talk about how our world changed, and how we changed the world. Follow us on Twitter at @mipspod. Email us at musliminplainsight@gmail.com.Producers and Hosts: Anisa Khalifa and Khadija KhalilConsulting Producer: Paroma Chakravarty