Today she travels the world, attends a red-carpet movie premiere and sits on panels with astronauts, former presidents and feminist icons.But in the years after 9/11, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, center, sits at the Islamic Center of New York University during Friday prayers, Dec. 27, 2019. At 17, she and a group of friends started the blog Muslimgirl.com in response to anti-Muslim bullying they experienced after 9/11.A decade later, her She was 9 when the airliners struck the World Trade Center towers, and she remembers the warning of her Jordanian immigrant father: “They’re going to blame us.”In the aftermath, she was bullied. People threw eggs at her home and slashed her mother’s tires. Her family faced such a backlash that her father temporarily relocated them to Jordan.While she is proud of being “born and raised a Jersey girl,” it was only in Jordan that she began to take pride in her roots. She learned Arabic and appreciated Middle Eastern food and hospitality. When she returned to the U.S., she began to wear a headscarf as an act of defiance against a rising anti-Muslim tide.“I lost a lot of friends, people started treating me differently,” she said. But she also became an ambassador for her faith. Students, even teachers, stopped her in school and asked about the Quran and Islam.“I had to learn as much as I possibly could about my own religion, the ins and outs of it, what Islamophobes were saying about it, so that I could understand how to respond,” she said.Eventually, she concluded that if the people around her had those questions, so did many others.In recent years, Forbes magazine chose her for its “30 Under 30” list of top achievers. Michelle Obama asked her to speak at the United State of Women Summit. She was also part of a panel that included female astronaut Cody Coleman and was moderated by former President Bill Clinton. Most recently, she served on an advisory committee for the live-action remake of Disney’s “Aladdin” and attended the premiere.“It was such a full-circle moment for me, because when I was a little girl, Princess Jasmine was one of the only representations that I had growing up,” she said.Being on the committee allowed her “to try to course-correct some of the problematic stereotypes” in the first movie, including some that she did not notice as a child.She pointed to two examples: The opening song talked about a faraway place that is “barbaric.” And Jasmine was dressed in a belly dancing outfit and chains in a “hyper-sexualized and oppressive way.”On her site, Al-Khatahtbeh is especially proud of stories that deal with race and sexuality. “Of course, female sexuality is honored within our religion, and it shouldn’t be something we shy away from or think of as a taboo.”Most of the site’s visitors live in the U.S. and Britain, and an estimated 70% are Millennials and Gen Z ages 15 to 32. One of the site’s most controversial stories was written by a Muslim transgender convert.“We want to push the envelope that way by creating that space and reminding people that they have a place within our religion,” she said. “I’m really proud of that, because one thing MuslimGirl does really well is we attract youth. They want to come in, and they want to learn more about Islam because of the way that we put it out there. We always say that our language is the Millennial tongue.”
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