KING OF THE WORLD
Episode 6: Recovery, Rebirth, and Resilience: Trump USA

Hosted by Shahjehan Khan, produced by Asad Butt, associate produced & researched by Lindsy Gamble, and sound designed and mixed by Mark Annotto

Shahjehan takes us along on The Kominas international tour, his genuine recovery, and graduation just as anti-Sharia law, the Islamophobia Network, and Trump’s campaign are ramping up.

Wednesday, October 13th, 2021
—————————-
Chapter 1: INTRO

[Music]

Shahjehan Khan
If you had told me when I first started playing that red fender strat on the day of my ameen that one day I’d be on the other side of the world playing some loud-ass guitar through a Marshall Stack at the fucking BBC with five video cameras floating around, in the same room where Jimi Hendrix once did the same thing, I would NEVER have believed you.

[Music]

Furthermore, if you had said I’d be playing not just original songs but also punk rock covers of a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan qawwali song like the one you’re hearing or the Bollywood classic “Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai,” encompassing so many different elements of my musical and cultural backgrounds, I might have passed out in the middle of our conversation.

[Music]

But on July 13th, 2010, there I was, wielding a butterscotch blonde Telecaster, wearing a long white kurta totally unbuttoned to expose my very punk chest hair, black jeans, Adidas, and a green beret atop my head. And, of course, drenched in sweat (as was then and still is my MO).

[Music]

That day was and remains one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had. But, as with many other pivotal moments in my musical career, it was both a high and a low point. Behind the impassioned guitar playing, I was wondering how long I could keep it all together.

[Sounds]

How long I could hide the fact that just a few days prior, after a year and a half of stone-cold by-the-grit-of-my-teeth sobriety, I snuck a couple secret joints and drinks in the middle of The Kominas’ first-ever tour of the UK, the one I had booked and was supposed to be managing.

[Sounds]

It was kind of a split-second decision, but for folks in recovery like myself, that’s usually a sign that things have been brewing under the surface for some time. The tour certainly had its stresses, but at the end of the day I had no long-term plan, just a shaky dream that rock and roll would save me from myself. I wasn’t really accountable to anyone other than myself. And so it was no surprise that eventually, I just kinda wanted to let loose and get high again. It felt like maybe I could get it right this time, just get high when I wanted to not needed to. But almost as soon as I took in those deep, smoke-filled breaths, the calm subsided and a small but noticeable voice in my head was like, “Oh shit, here we go.”

[Sounds]

The mental obsession was back:
Could I find a way to do it again? No one would have to know.
No, no, no, I shouldn’t. I gotta prove to myself that I can take it or leave it. That was the whole point—it’s no big deal.
But fuck, it felt so good yesterday, and I’m on a fucking European tour with a band, why the fuck can’t I get high?!
Shit, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m fucked….

See, even though it had been a year and a half of “forced sobriety,” I hadn’t addressed any of the reasons I got high in the first place; I just pushed it down.

Pretty soon, I was getting more and more out of control. Eventually, my bandmates found out. By the time we flew back to the U.S. that summer, there were serious signs of trouble. But there was no time for a break. We lined up all sorts of shows in New York, and although I was going through the motions and playing my guitar, my mind was somewhere else, trying my best to outthink that mental panic of being in the midst of active addiction. And by this time, even though weed was my first love, I was kinda doing whatever drugs I could get my hands on.

Sunny Ali
There was one show in Boston in particular where you, where you were wearing chappals.

Shahjehan Khan
Sunny Ali hadn’t yet joined The Kominas, but we were touring a bunch with his band at the time.

Sunny Ali
And at some point you, you took off one of your chappals and you just flung it into the crowd. And I remember it hitting some girl, like who was right in front of me, like right in the face. She just walked out of the show. And I was kind of like, “Oh shit, that's kinda fucked up. Uh, that dude kinda seems like an asshole or something.” But yeah. That was, you know, just before you quit. So I don't know if you remember that at all.

Shahjehan Khan
I still don’t, and part of me didn’t want to put that in this episode, but fuck it, that’s how bad it was.

[Sounds]

The band was talking about moving to New York, starting our own label, teaming up with other friends, and I was watching it all go by, in a fearful, panicked haze.

The last straw was in December of 2010. The Kominas were invited by the city of Boston to play on fucking New Year’s Eve in the Boston Common. This should have been a crowning achievement for us, for me, capping off what was a historic year for the band.

[Sounds and Music]

Yet no one knew whether I was coming or going. I showed up, at least physically, but was totally checked out. It would turn out to be my last gig with the band.

All I wanted to do was zone the fuck out for the next few days, by myself, away from everyone and everything. I was high as shit, alone in my parents’ car at a train station near their house one night...when I got caught by the police. It was a weeknight, the cops were like my age, and when I rolled the window down they took my license and gave me a sad sort of look. “Why didn’t you just go home, man?” one of them remarked after noting how close by I lived. They said they would give me a pass and just slap me with a $400 fine for the weed rather than an OUI, but I had to call my parents to come get me because they weren’t about to let me drive home in that condition.

[Sounds]

And so on January 4th, 2011, the night before my parents’ wedding anniversary, Agha came and took me home like he had done so many times before.

After walking into my house and seeing the look of disappointment in Amma’s eyes, it seemed like nothing had changed over the last 10 years. I was 27 years old—not a fortuitous age in the rock 'n' roll world.

Was there any hope left for me at all?

[Theme]

From Rifelion Media, I’m Shahjehan Khan and this is the King of the World podcast, a historical, cultural, and personal look back at the 20 years since 9/11.

Episode 6: Recovery, Rebirth, and Resilience: Trump USA

Chapter 2: RECOVERY

Andy Short
Um, my name is Andy Short.

Shahjehan Khan
[laughing]

Andy Short
I am a longtime associate of Shahjehan Khan.

Shahjehan Khan
Andy was my first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. A sponsor in either AA or any 12-step program is someone who sort of takes you under their wing, helps walk you through the process of recovery, and is a little more involved with you than other friends you may make along the way.

Andy Short
We’ve known each other for over a decade.

Shahjehan Khan
On January 5th, 2011, what I now consider my first real sobriety date, I’d love to say that I woke up and was like, “I’M GONNA CHANGE MY LIFE TODAY,” and that’s how I ended up back in meetings. Truthfully, I ran out of options and had nothing better to do. I was basically under house arrest at my parents’ place in Boxborough, sleeping all day, up all night smoking cigarettes, and just in my own sad little world where it hurt to think about anything or anyone from my past.

Can you tell me about your first memory of me the first time that we met?

Andy Short
What I remember is driving out to your house in. What was it? What town—

Shahjehan Khan
Boxborough, Massachusetts.

Andy Short
Boxborough, Massachusetts. And taking Route 2 out there, and sitting there, and you were so sad.

Shahjehan Khan
Oh my goodness. Why was I so sad?

Andy Short
You were like fresh. I mean, I think I met you your first like month or something back, right?

Shahjehan Khan
Yeah. Andy is one of those guys that is so lovable it’s ridiculous. He’s got a big smile, and is now the extremely jacked director of a fitness company for folks in recovery. But when we first met, both of our lives looked very different.

Andy Short
And we were both like wicked potheads and we connected on that level. And I remember you talked—I'm sorry, if this is inappropriate—

Shahjehan Khan
No, no, no. This is all literally what I wanna hear.

Andy Short
You talked to me about just a real, a real cocaine habit. I remember feeling like I was like listening and trying to, you know, like trying to do the thing. And I really just felt like I'd missed out because I never got to do a lot of cocaine and it sounded kinda fun. Not that the children should—that’s the message they should get.

Shahjehan Khan
Both Andy and I used humor throughout our friendship and our 12-step work together to push through the tough stuff. That’s what a lot of people in recovery do (at least the ones I know); it’s the only way to give yourself a break when you start to look back at your life.

Andy Short
I remember there was all this, there were all these issues with the band. The band was like a HUGE problem.

Shahjehan Khan
Like, I couldn’t shut up about it.

Andy Short
It like wasn’t happening, it wasn’t even happening. It was occupying I think like 98% of your time and thinking.

Shahjehan Khan
What Andy and I are talking about here is how I wasn’t even in the band anymore, yet it still consumed me. My longest and most intimate relationship for my entire adult life had been with The Kominas. It was like watching an ex move on without me, knowing there was nothing I could do about it because I did it to myself.

Andy Short
And you talk about Basim and being so angry at him, resentful, and at the same time conflicted, because he was this very important person to you. You know, that was very clear, that all these relationships from the band were so important.

Shahjehan Khan
Andy (and others) insisted that my best days were ahead. That if I just put my recovery first, things would get better beyond my wildest dreams. And well, I had no choice but to start taking a long, hard look at who I was, who I really wanted to be without the band, without all the punk rock glory, and of course, without the weed.

[Music]

This time, almost nine years after I’d attended my first 12-step meeting, I was able to accept that whatever I had been doing all these years wasn’t working. I needed help, and I finally accepted it.

I started to tell my story at meetings to offer some hope to people just starting out, something else which is pretty common to do. I didn’t realize it at first, but this simple act was a therapeutic way to start to let people in, to start to chip away at my “terminal uniqueness,” something that I’d perhaps been holding onto before I even smoked my first joint. This was just a different kind of performance, I guess. I was now a storyteller, and it turned out that people could relate and appreciate me in a way I never imagined.

And slowly, things started to improve. I don’t remember when, but one day I realized I hadn’t thought about getting high all day. I started to actually be happy, even grateful to be given another chance. I met a couple musicians at a meeting and we started jamming and writing fun new songs, just like your everyday basement rock songs, like feel-good stuff.

[Music]

I started to think like maybe I was a good person deep down who had kind of lost my way? I was certainly a much more pleasant family member.

Meryum Khan
One of the times when I felt like things were turning around for you was when you invited me and Amma and Agha to go to a meeting with you.

Shahjehan Khan
My sister Meryum had a front-row seat to all of this.

Meryum Khan
And I remember we went to a meeting, it was in a church basement, and you spoke a little bit about your experiences and, and other people were talking about what they had gone through. And I just remember feeling like this was really a community that you had become a part of. And these were people that understood what you were going through and, and supported you. And I remember leaving that meeting feeling like, “Oh, wow. Like this is something that he's getting through. He has people who are doing it with him.” Um, and it was a really positive experience for me.

Shahjehan Khan
I started reawakening lost interests like hiking, started taking care of myself physically by eventually quitting cigarettes and getting into running and working out. Andy felt hopeful I’d stick with it this time.

Andy Short
You were taking action all the time, it felt like to me. You're showing up at meetings. Like we were, we were just like meeting up, doing the thing. My sense was you started thinking about like what's next for you. You know, like things started to get into proportion. Like it was, you were starting to think about like, “How do I like move forward instead of be kind of trapped by the past?”

Chapter 3: SHARIA

Shahjehan Khan
I’m not sure if it was like post-Kominas media hype PTSD or just the rawness of being newly sober (maybe a combination of both), but I was in a “tune-out-the-news”-type phase for those first couple of years. I was fortunate enough to solely focus on my recovery. I had my family there every day, providing not just emotional support but basic necessities like food and housing. And let’s be real—those cops in my hometown took pity on me, something we know is statistically extremely unlikely the darker your skin is.

In terms of what was happening in post-9/11 America though, it wouldn’t really take too long for me to “defog” and start to look around again. To see the Islamophobia industry raging stronger than ever.

[The Daily Show]
Jon Stewart: We all know this country has a problem with Islamic extremists, by which I do NOT mean ISLAM EXTREEEME. [Sound] You’ll l-l-l-love it….

Shahjehan Khan
Islamophobia became more organized and mainstream around 2010, perhaps as narratives of mosques being incubators of radicalization, Obama being Muslim, and fear of Islam started taking over the U.S.

In 2011 and again in 2015, the Center for American Progress released reports called Fear, Incorporated that detailed the coordinated right-wing effort—backed by money—to push an anti-Muslim agenda here in the States. They called it the Islamophobia Network.

[Audio]

The reports showed that tens of millions of dollars were—and are—flowing to Islamophobia think tanks and experts to spread hate and misinformation about Muslims and Islam to millions of Americans.

How does it work? Well, foundations and donors provide the money first, which then goes to tightly knit organizations who rely on a handful of so-called experts to disseminate misinformation, which is spread by a larger network of activists, politicians, and media, all culminating in the attitude than Islam is violent. This Islamophobia machine results in further marginalization of and discrimination against Muslims.

As of 2014, the network had nearly 70 groups whose purpose was to amplify anti-Muslim sentiment.

Their biggest accomplishment—convincing you Sharia is taking over the USA.

[Audio]

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
So what happened in 2010 is that a right-wing lawyer by the name of David Yerushalmi decided that he wanted to introduce the notion of a scary Islamic law into the American public discourse.

Shahjehan Khan
Sumbul Ali-Karamali is an author and lawyer. She wrote Demystifying Shari’ah: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Not Taking Over Our Country, which came out in May 2020.

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
He's a lawyer. So he knows perfectly well that Sharia, Islamic law, whatever you call it cannot take over the United States. No religious law can take over the United States because of the first amendment to our Constitution, specifically the establishment clause. And yet he himself says that he doesn't really care about that. His purpose was to introduce the idea of Sharia as a scary thing.

Shahjehan Khan
And well, it worked! Americans have a skewed notion of what Sharia actually is.

[Sounds]

The literal translation of the Arabic word Sharia is a “path to the watering place,” or “path to righteousness” figuratively. It’s basically a set of guidelines that ideally suggests the way people ought to live, a combination of interpretations of our holy text, the Quran, and Sunnah, or the practices of Prophet Muhammad (by the way there’s no real exhaustive list of those either; different people believe different things). The point is that Sharia is up to interpretation and complex (even to Muslims), and not all places in the world are the same, so obviously it’s gonna have different flavors wherever you’re at.

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
There was not consensus a lot of the time, right? People being who they are, most of the time there was disagreement. But Islamic scholars all agreed that every Islamic law, every religious guideline has to be in accordance with the Maqasid al-Sharia. Now the Maqasid means the goals of the Sharia. So Islamic scholars articulated five—sometimes six, depending on how you articulate them—the five or six goals of the Sharia that every Islamic law had to comply with, had to align with: And so they said every Islamic law has to comply with the following goals: that everyone has the right to life, the right to intellect, the right to family, the right to religion, and the right to resources.

Shahjehan Khan
Wait a minute, hold up. Rights? To Life? Intellect? Family? Religion? WHAAAAAAAT?

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Now to me, as a Muslim American, that sounds to me kind of like our U.S. Constitution, doesn’t it? And yet, these goals were articulated a thousand years before the U.S. Constitution.

Shahjehan Khan
Sidenote: It isn’t even accurate to say Sharia law; it’s kind of like saying chai fucking tea. But this dude David and others in the Islamophobia network coined that construct and were hell-bent on spreading the notion that scary ass Sharia Law was gonna take away everyone’s freedom and hot dogs or whatever.

Sumbul Ali-Karamali
So he deliberately started this campaign and he was just very successful. And he and his colleagues also have the ear of legislators, also a lot of people in Congress. And so he was able to push through this idea and it really took fire. He made a lot of money.

[Sounds]

He was able to convince 14 states to pass anti-Sharia legislation. All for nothing. It's a colossal waste of time.

Unfortunately, you know, the Islamophobia network is really good at spreading lies and then Muslims have to kind of scramble to go and set the record straight. And it's always really hard because lies can be super simple; the truth is always more complicated.

[Sounds and Commercial]

Chapter 4: REBIRTH

[Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
Around this time of Islamophobic hysteria setting in, I felt like maybe I was ready to go back to school, again to UMASS Lowell, but this time without any pressure from anyone.

Once I was accepted, I just dove the fuck in. Went every day, did all the work I was supposed to, participated in class, and got to know my professors. For me, every single aced quiz or test, every A on a paper was like a gradual rebuttal of whatever bullshit I’d been telling myself for years; that I was the black sheep of the family, that I would never amount to anything, that I’d always end up quitting because I was just a fundamentally flawed person.

Malik Khan (Agha)
That was indeed a real high point for everyone in the family. You had reached a major milestone in your life.

Shahjehan Khan
It seemed like I was adding another layer to my identity as well: a straight-A fucking college student.

Meryum Khan
You had finally done something on your own terms that you were proud of. I remember you had a professor who had given you some type of special recognition. I don't remember the details of it, but I remember that you were really proud of yourself for getting that. And we all felt the same way. And that was another time where, you know, I really saw tangibly that things were moving forward for you. And, um, you were the driving force behind it.

Shahjehan Khan
It means a lot to me to hear Meryum say that (maybe I even cried when I heard it, you don’t know), specifically because I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have such a self-destructive brother. After all, when it comes to people struggling with addiction, the people around us often suffer equally, if not more.

Malik Khan (Agha)
And most importantly, uh, you had become an educated person but you had become a much better human being.

Shahjehan Khan
And so there I was, comfortably a student for a couple of years, being the fucking good kid (em, almost 30-year-old grown-ass man) that I never thought I could be. Then came April of 2013.

[Audio and Sounds]

The Boston Marathon is technically the world’s oldest marathon, established in 1897, and is easily one of Boston’s most-treasured public spectacles. There’s usually about half a million people watching along the 26.2-mile route that starts in Hopkinton and ends right downtown, on Boylston Street. I’ve seen it up close many times, as have many Bostonians. So naturally I freaked the fuck out hearing of an attack. My stomach clenched into a familiar tight intestinal fist. But also, like I’ve said before, that other kind of fear was close behind, the part of me that knew that if this was a Muslim, fucking uhhhhh it was gonna suck so bad...AGAIN.

[Audio]

A little bit before 3pm, two almost simultaneous explosions had ripped through the crowd at the finish line, sending all of downtown, and all of Boston, really, into a tailspin of panic, shock, and horror. It looked like another fucking full-scale terrorist attack in the sense that no one knew what the fuck was going on, people were injured, and it wasn’t clear whether more was coming.

[Audio]

Two brothers were identified as the attackers three days later—two Chechen, Muslim brothers, as we would be reminded over and over and over again in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. They then stole a car and killed an MIT police officer. The eldest, Tamerlan, was killed in a police shootout, the youngest, Dzhokhar, supposedly a nice kid from Cambridge, was arrested the following day, hiding in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, scrawling something about vengeance for Iraq and Afghanistan as he was severely wounded in a barrage of police gunfire.

Pretty soon after the attack, a good friend who was at the Marathon that day mentioned how the crowd really came together, helping each other, and he said something that I’ll never forget. That the response was “uniquely American,” that he felt super proud of his city, his country. “Uniquely American”—it sounded so weird to me, and so like not the way that I understood the world at all. I felt sad that he was there and had to fucking see that shit, I was like thanking God that he wasn’t hurt, and wondered what sort of lasting effect it would have on his brain. I knew that he was still in shock, but in a way the sort of primal thing that came out sounded like this to me: America is the best, we do everything best, even empathy and humanity. We have better humans here, that’s why other people want to take that from us. And that’s the part that I couldn’t relate with at all.

It felt like 9/11 all over again.

[Sounds]

Following a mourning period for Boston, I started to see and hear the phrase “Boston Strong” all over the place—the same calls for unity and strength in the face of evil like after the September 11th attacks. And every time, I got that familiar uneasy feeling, kind of like I did when I’d see the “Support our Troops” ribbons during the beginning of the War on Terror. I felt a vibe every time I’d take the train, and anytime I’d see someone who happened to be more visibly Muslim than me. I’d get this panicked solidarity type feeling, like something inside me wanting to silently communicate with them to let them know that I was there in case something went down. I hoped they’d do the same for me.

[Audio]

That fucking Boston Strong expression was everywhere, again asking us all to be united in the face of evil but not leaving much for those of us with complicated feelings. It made me question all that identity shit that I never really sorted out even while with The Kominas. How Muslim was I? How Brown was I? Why was I feeling so attached to everything, like I wasn’t enough of one thing or another thing?

[Sounds]

A few months after the Boston Marathon bombings, in mid-2013, I moved into an apartment in Lowell.

[Audio]

For anyone that has never been to Lowell, well, it’s not much like Boxborough at all. There’s a different sort of energy there. It’s considered the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S., and a place that kind of fell by the wayside along with Detroit or Buffalo or many other such cities. The point is, there’s this very palpable tension between the “old money” whites in the city and various other less politically dominant but socially prominent communities.

Here’s a post from my Facebook feed on September 4th, 2013:

[Sounds]

“I have lived in Lowell for almost 2 months. I run the same 2.8 mile loop every morning or afternoon, at almost the same time. Okay maybe not every day…

Anyway, I started growing out my beard a few days ago, and I went out for a run today, only to be treated to a loud "SAND N-word" from a car.

The car drove by again, this time they yelled again, and mumbled something about the twin towers.

If you don't think racism or bigotry is alive and well in America, even ‘liberal Massachusetts,’ then think again. And if you're a racist or bigot in 2013, just know that this is one of the most irresponsible, uneducated, and pathetic things you can be.

It's not my job to prove anything to you. You are a lazy piece of shit, and it is up to you to educate yourself.”

[Sounds]

Who knows what motivated the dude-bros to say what they did, laughing and probably high fiving each other like the extreme guys from that scene in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

[Audio]

But something about the brazenness of that incident empowered me to speak again, publicly (maybe just on my Facebook platform), and, well, it kinda felt cathartic. Like now that I was more educated and a couple years sober, I could maybe reawaken some of that punk attitude I was so used to projecting while I was with the band?

I’d like to think that’s what motivated me the following semester to take a particularly poignant class for a Brown Muslim man. I enrolled in a class in the Criminal Justice department—44.248: International and Domestic fucking Terrorism.

[Music]

I distinctly remember picking it because, well, fuck them.

It was a pretty packed course; I think especially on the heels of the Marathon bombing, there was a renewed interest in the scientific study of terrorism. And while it was certainly interesting to learn that, for instance, one of the first large-scale terrorist attacks in U.S. history was perpetrated by Mario Buda, an Italian so-called anarchist who bombed Wall Street in 1920, we inevitably found ourselves hampered in the Muslim shit. The same old discussions about radicalization, ideology versus action, and a lot of the kinds of problematic debunked theories that we talked about in the last episode.

[Music]

Every time I left that class, I really wished that I could walk across the quad to the library and see that other Brown kid who I used to make jokes with years earlier, jokes that we’d often turn into songs….

Chapter 5: REUNION

Shahjehan Khan
What you’re hearing right now is the first bit of music that Basim and I made together right before he asked me to rejoin the band. See, after releasing an album and touring for a couple years without me, The Kominas had gone on an indefinite hiatus in 2013, and now in 2014, were thinking of getting back together.

The thing I love most about this is that it’s raw, and unfinished, just a demo. We didn’t do it in some fancy studio, it’s literally us on a Macbook, using Garageband, the same way we wrote and recorded several songs on our first album. We never even put it out—this is actually the first time anyone other than us is hearing it—but it was a way for us to test the waters, make sure we could still work together. It seemed like we just missed each other and as soon as I plugged in my guitar, we were back to the basement goofballs that bonded all those years earlier.

In no time, he sent along a few other rough sketches that he and the other guys were working on and invited me to come to a band practice.

Sunny Ali
I remember that first jam the four of us did together.

Shahjehan Khan
Sunny Ali again, who had joined the band during my absence.

Sunny Ali
And we are working on “Banana.” This was before it was even called “Banana.”

[Music]

But that day we were practicing one part in particular. And before we would go into it, you would just, just go like “duh-duh-duh” and then we would start playing. And then at some point just jokingly you said “banana,” and then we started playing it. And that's kind of when I was like, “Oh, like maybe I could tie that in somehow like with the mental health stuff, like, don't go bananas or whatever.”

Shahjehan Khan
And just like that, we were back in the studio, and then playing our first gigs in years, shooting music videos (including one starring my dad)—

[Music]

—all while I was finishing up a master’s degree in community social psychology. Yeah, you heard that right. The kid that dropped out of college three times was gonna get a fucking master’s degree!

Shahjehan Khan
The year was a blur, but not the kind of blur so many other years of my life had been. Not only was I now in my third year of sobriety, but we released our fourth album, Stereotype, which got reviewed in Rolling Stone.

Karna Ray
Stereotype I think is still a really, really good album.

Shahjehan Khan
That’s Karna Ray, our drummer.

Karna Ray
And it translated really well. And like the band sounded really fresh and everything. But I think that like a lot of 90s revival stuff happens generally out of this feeling of like almost an end of history. Again, just talking about like the kind of Obama-era political doldrums and kind of feeling that the world was at a standstill, especially if we're talking about related to the turmoil of post-9/11 and Obama being as seen as the time like a justifiable and rational leader on the world stage, that America’s position in the world had reached this manageable evil. And I feel like it’s like throwback to Clinton-era politics, where we just acknowledged their manageable evil, as we crawled further and further across markets around the world.

Shahjehan Khan
And our reunion couldn’t have come at a more relevant time, because some of the darkest days in recent American history were just around the corner:

Chapter 6: TRUMP

[Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
As The Kominas were reentering the scene, this fucking guy, this fucking reality-TV-star-turned-dangerous-demagogue, was declaring a bid for President. Everyone around me joked that there was no way he was a serious candidate, but his words had dire consequences.

I mean, Islamophobia has always ramped up around elections, but Trump started to say more and more serious shit, and a certain segment of Americans were listening and agreeing. I shit you not, research found that there was a correlation between the number of Islam-related tweets made by Trump in a single week and the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes that took place in the days and weeks that followed. Look it up.

Is it any surprise then that by 2015, 55% of Americans viewed Islam unfavorably? The Islamophobia network was doing its fucking job and now had its biggest cheerleader at center stage.

[Audio]

Muslims around the country, around the world, were rightfully scared. Again.

[Audio]

The end of 2015 also marked the end of my education. I finished my master’s degree, and was getting ready to celebrate five years sober. A few weeks before the new year, we all found out that Trump was planning on holding one of his insane rallies at the Tsongas arena in Lowell, of all places, at the exact place I had my undergraduate commencement and would soon have the graduate one. I found out about a planned protest. So the night of January 4th, I joined about 100 people and we all snuck into the rally.

[Audio]

The place was completely packed, easily over 10,000 people in attendance. It had the vibe of a really fucked-up carnival. Once we took our seats, I looked around the auditorium and saw a woman in hijab on the far left side. We sort of gave each other a heads-up, as if silently saying to each other, “I see you, I know why you’re here, take care of yourself.”

As we waited for the asshole to take the stage, the screens around us were airing much of his campaign propaganda, specifically looping his statement about the shutdown of Muslims. The whole crowd cheered. I was horrified.

When he finally came out, I was only about 30 feet away. He blabbered incoherently about Iran, Obama, the border, and of course Islam. Whatever he said people cheered. I kept having flashbacks to the previous year, when I was listening to Bill Nye the Science Guy deliver a commencement speech in the same auditorium to thousands of young, hopeful people looking ahead to bright futures and perhaps changing the world.

But there I was waiting for my cue to start yelling and screaming with the other few people in my protest pod.

[Audio]

As I later told a news outlet: “Following three or four other disruptions, my group eventually started shouting our ‘Hey hey, ho ho, racism, sexism, and Islamophobia has got to go’ chant. By this time, the crowd was a little more on the annoyed side, but they were still very rowdy and glad to see us go. On my way out, I looked right in the eyes of a man and screamed, ‘I’m an American, just like you!’ to which he replied, ‘Then act like it!’”

The whole fucking arena was booing and screaming “USA USA” over us.

[Audio]

But we didn’t give a shit. This was our way, my way, of stepping up and making it clear that there was something wrong with where the country was headed.

[Audio]

For the rest of 2016, many many many Americans—including Muslims—started to come out in droves to make their voices heard and try their hardest to prevent a Trump victory. A lot of folks responded to the increasing anti-Blackness, anti-Muslimness, xenophobia, nativism, and racism by trying to take control of their own portrayals and disputing racist sentiments, often times in direct opposition to what seemed like a growing support for Trump and his campaign.

[Music]

For The Kominas, this meant booking our first large-scale U.S. tour since I had rejoined the band, which we called “Rock Therapy.” And that’s exactly what it felt like. As horrendous as the daily news cycle became, we brought and received companionship, solidarity, compassion, and love during an almost month-long, loud, raucous, continuous mosh pit from coast to coast. I was so thankful to have my band back again, to no longer feel like I was on the sidelines either physically (battling cravings to get fucked up), mentally (trapped in my crazy-ass brain), or spiritually (I still wasn’t sure exactly where all that stuff fit for me, but I was able to find peace and serenity on our long drives between cities rather than worry about having to get high).

It felt like I was alive and awake in a whole new way that summer.

[Sounds]

Not disparate fragmented identities but one person bringing all parts of me to that experience. I was healthier (both mentally and physically) than I had perhaps ever been in my life, but also part of something bigger than myself again, which was having a positive impact and meant something to other people.

Chapter 7: RESILIENCE

Batool Raza
So I, um, went to law school with the idea and I think it's, I mean, a lot of people might have this idea and it sounds silly when I say it, but I literally went to law school to help people.

Shahjehan Khan
Batool Raza is Assistant General Counsel at Boston Public Health Commission. She’s a Pakistani who eventually came to Boston for law school. She realized quickly that she was good at litigation, and ended up working in both the private and public sectors, including the DA’s office, where she started to get a taste of the “real world.”

Batool Raza
I had like a lot of like horrible experiences with judges and I still sometimes have experiences like that with judges and, and like, you know, defendants and people in the court. I think that having the experience of being judged for who I am before I've even had a chance to prove myself—so to speak—really allows me to identify with my communities that are, um, underrepresented and disadvantaged.

[Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
It was those very underrepresented and disadvantaged communities that would be fodder for the thing that actually happened. The thing that if a lot of us zoom out and look at the big picture can’t wrap our heads around in theory, but in a way makes perfect sense for the direction America had been heading for a long time, maybe quietly at first, but by 2016 you couldn’t deny it anymore.

[Audio and Sounds]

He fucking won.

I remember going to a gym in East Boston the very next day after the election. East Boston’s a part of the city that has traditionally been home to lots of immigrants, and as I was doing my best to sweat away the national tragedy that was unfolding all around me, these three dudes started yelling and high fiving each other, saying, “Eyyy, we got ahh country baaaack!! Yeeeahhhhhh.” I had seen them around a lot before, always having a sneaking suspicion that they were cops; I was paralyzed with fear and left immediately.

[Audio]

On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, now known as the first version of the Travel Ban, or the Muslim Ban.

What many thought was mere rhetoric to mobilize voters during his campaign became straight-up Islamophobic policy one week into his presidency. And it was really scary, part of this heaviness that just came over everything from the day he won the election. The original Order banned the entry of people from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States for 90 days, indefinitely barred Syrian refugees, and banned all other refugees for 120 days. Future iterations with fairly negligible changes were put into effect as previous versions were shut down or expired.

Batool Raza
I remember I had booked a trip to Europe. And then I was in France when the Travel Ban was announced and I was supposed to fly back the day the Travel Ban was going to go into effect. And I could not believe it. I was shocked and I was hurt, mortified. And one of the first thoughts I was like, “Thank God I'm a U.S. citizen. Like I can enter.” But I was getting text messages from everyone being like, “Will you be able to come in?” Like, you know, um, because you know, I'm Muslim and it was called the Muslim ban. I literally flew into Boston the day the Travel Ban went into effect.

Shahjehan Khan
Eventually the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the third version of the ban, ruling that the President has broad authority to suspend entry to the U.S. The Court’s decision encouraged the Trump administration to continue enacting questionable policies, such as extreme vetting measures of certain refugees’ social media accounts and personal information from 15 years prior (aka the Backdoor Muslim Ban). It also paved the way for targeting U.S. citizens for denaturalization, proposing a wealth test on immigrants, and a ban against Central American asylum seekers at the Mexican border.

But something else also started to happen right away.

[Sounds]

It started to feel like there were two distinct sides to all this shit, that basically half the country was on our side this time, not like right after 9/11.

Batool Raza
It was like this awful thing happened by the President of the United States, but Americans that I saw around me were not having it, you know, they were like, “Absolutely not. We're gonna do whatever is in our power to like stop it.”

Shahjehan Khan
Lawyers like Batool were able to gather lots of data and go back to courts and show them how fucked this whole thing was, how unnecessary and awful detentions of innocent people were happening all around the country.

Batool Raza
When I landed in Boston and I remember I landed and I like went to the bathroom. Um, and there were these signs that said, “Volunteer lawyers come” like with directions. And it was just like very heartwarming because it, it felt like you belonged.

Shahjehan Khan
Batool was just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of people affected by the Muslim Ban. And she joined the ranks of lawyers trying to help those affected.

[Audio]

In addition to the legal community mobilizing, protests were happening at airports around the country.

Filmmaker Iram Parveen Bilal, director of 2020’s award-winning I’ll Meet You There, was raised in Nigeria and Pakistan before coming to the U.S. to attend Caltech. She remembers the protest in Los Angeles.

Iram Parveen Bilal
My mom is about to come to this country to start receiving medical care. And I'm hearing that even green card holders are being detained because everything was so just complicated then. So I, you know, I never thought that Trump being elected could affect me so personally, so soon. That within like nine days, there was question that, you know, I was calling my mom and saying that, “If they stop you, you know, you're going to have to call this lawyer. She'll be waiting outside.” All this stuff, right? All this stress is happening. I hear about this protest and I pick up my protest bag and I rush, I take an Uber. I walk I’m just walking into Tom Bradley, which is an international terminal. I hear like chants, you know, to this day, when I'm talking about this, I get goosebumps. Like I can just hear it, “LET THEM IN, LET THEM IN.” And like, you know, there’s [sic] thousands of people at Tom Bradley—that same terminal that I came to the U.S. for the first time, you know, I took to go to school at Caltech. And these people are holding banners that say, “Let them in—we are all Muslim,” all of that.

Shahjehan Khan
Safe to say Iram was feeling a lot of different shit at the same time.

Iram Parveen Bilal
As I was walking I didn't realize, but I was bawling. Because I realized at that moment that I was fearful that there wouldn't be this much support.

[Music]

I could not have believed that people would come out in droves and in our support, because I feared that at the bottom of it, people didn't like Muslims, and that what Donald Trump was saying is what every American felt. That was the fear from like baggage from post-9/11 America, right? And the post-9/11 world. And this is the moment that was super American is, as I'm walking and I’m crying, this woman comes muscling through the crowd and hugs me tight and whispers in my ear, “You will be fine.”

Chapter 8: CONCLUSION

[Theme]

Shahjehan Khan
The Muslim Ban would go on to have major implications for our country, including
fewer Muslim refugees,
an increase in intimidation, bias, and violence against American Muslims,
an increase in American Muslim visits to the ER but a decrease in their visits to primary care doctors, and
the reinforcement of the supposed link between Islam and violence.


Iram’s story though, and the reassurance she received from that stranger, makes me think this: When I turned 18 right after 9/11, I was anything but fine. Almost ten years later, after I quit The Kominas, I wasn’t fine. But now, as it seemed like America was at its least fine point in my entire life, maybe our community and I could finally handle it?

END


Next time, on King of the World:
“9/11 made it that you had to identify as something, and that was not from your free will, that was not from your own arrival at your identity.”

Thanks for listening to today’s episode. King of the World is a production of Rifelion Media. Today’s show was produced by me and Asad Butt, and with sound design and sound mixing by Mark Annotto. Lindsy Gamble is our associate producer. We had production help from Isabel Havens, Mona Baloch, and Erica Rife. Theme song by me with production help, mixing, and mastering by Nick Zampiello. Original music by Simon Hutchinson. Special thanks to Sunny Ali, Andy Short, Sumbul Ali-Karamali, Karna Ray, Batool Raza, and Iram Parveen Bilal. We’ll have links to each of them in the show notes. Thanks again to my family—Amma, Agha, Meryum, and Noona. Thanks for listening. I’m Shahjehan Khan.

[Commercial]