KING OF THE WORLD
Episode 7: The Improbable Now—Mental Health, Wellness, Wholeness

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

Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric and its trickle-down effects take hold while also acting as a catalyst for a major uptick in American Muslim activism, representation, pop culture, and voices. Shahjehan answers the transformative question that tormented him 20 years ago.

Wednesday, October 27th, 2021
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Chapter 1: INTRO

[Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
On July 10th of 2014, I found myself in a small, cozy office. The place could have easily been a therapist's office frozen in time from the ’70s, with a big comfy couch and a few of those cushy brown lounge chairs that are just as inviting to sit in as they are to nap in. I was auditioning for a theater company based in Watertown, Massachusetts. They were called The Improbable Players, a group formed by people in recovery, with shows about addiction, performed by actors themselves who had been through all this shit. Like that was the main criteria.

[Audio]

I had done a little theater as a kid. This was before I started obsessively playing guitar, and I loved it. I was good at it. During those stops and starts of college, I even found myself as the lead in several plays at UMASS Lowell. But just like stuff with The Kominas, any momentary successes or feelings like I belonged on the stage were quickly overshadowed by the familiar weed-induced and doubtful haze that seemed to follow me everywhere. But, I had now been sober for three years, and was ready to try it again.

Improbable Players’ flagship show is an original piece called “I’ll Never Do That,” which is about four family members over a 20-year timeline where we see the mother’s alcoholism and son’s drug addiction rip their family unit apart at the seams. On this day, I was auditioning for the role of the father.

[Audio]

It was just me and the company founder sitting across from each other. I had never read the script before (it was what’s known as a cold read). I was pretty nervous. I had only just rejoined the band and was slowly gaining back confidence. I couldn’t shake this feeling though that this was a super important opportunity, something that could not only help me stay sober, but also allow me to explore something new about myself in the process. And joining a troupe seemed like a natural progression,

[Music]

in line with my lifelong pursuit of performance as an outlet for whatever negative energy seemed to somehow always creep into my brain and my life.

Well, not only was it a great audition, but the director hired me on the spot. For the next four years, I traveled up and down the East Coast, doing dozens of performances at high schools, colleges, community organizations, and conferences.

I was a working actor now!

[Sounds]

At the end of every show, all four of us actors would introduce ourselves, and tell a one-minute version of our respective “stories.” My story typically started like this:

“I’m Shahjehan. I grew up in a Pakistani American Muslim household so I definitely found it super hard to talk openly about my addiction and mental health issues while I was growing up.”

As we toured around different schools and towns,

[Music]

it felt like every time I said those three facts out loud, (Pakistani, American, Muslim) I was owning who I was, all of it, rather than keeping parts of me secret, tucked away from other parts, depending on who I was with. And man, that felt cathartic.

I’ll never forget one show in particular. As we were getting ready to leave, a student—a recent Iraqi immigrant—wanted to say thank you. Her English wasn’t great, but it was clear that our performance had resonated with her, especially at the end when I was telling my “real” story and mentioned that I was from a Muslim family. She understood that, even if my performed character wasn’t actually Muslim in the script, for me, as an actor, I was telling it from that perspective, something for “us.”

[Theme]

I was really taken aback, moved to tears even. Here was someone from the other side of the world telling me that I mattered, my struggle mattered. That basically the darkest part of my life, the vulnerability of my open and honest story—even just the bits she could understand—had a profound impact on her.

And all it really took was me saying: My name is Shahjehan. I’m a Pakistani American Muslim in long-term recovery.

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 7: The Improbable Now—Mental Health, Wellness, Wholeness

Chapter 2: MORE ISLAMOPHOBIA

Shahjehan Khan
“Fuck do we have to talk more about him?!”

[Audio]

By 2018, about halfway through his presidency, there were no signs that Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was letting up. From his Tweets and speeches to his policies and cabinet picks, hating on all sorts of mainly marginalized people was central to the Trump agenda. Worse yet, Trump’s Islamophobia emboldened other public and political officials all across the country to spew their own hate against Muslims.

[Audio]

An analysis by BuzzFeed News found that Republican officials in 49 states openly attacked Muslims with language and proposed legislation between 2015 and 2018 (not Utah...must be the mountains).

Qasim Rashid
I think one of the examples of how far we have to go is there are still no consequences, none, for a politician or a celebrity to say something Islamophobic or anti-Muslim.

Shahjehan Khan
Qasim Rashid is a human rights lawyer, a former nominee for U.S. Congress, and now Executive Director of Common Purpose PAC, a dynamic new organization that’s raising money for underrepresented candidates to advance justice and compassion in our politics and nation.

Qasim Rashid
You know, I mean, the former president literally ran on a Muslim ban and, you know, every single Republican got on board with him and it was no big deal.

Shahjehan Khan
In 2019 and 2020 Qasim ran for Virginia State Senate as a democrat.

Qasim Rashid
I can tell you as somebody who's ran for office the last two years in a row, um, when my opponents realized that I was a serious threat, their default was trying to tie me to Islamic terrorism and other nonsense like that because they had no actual ideas to run on and they didn't suffer any consequences from folks not only within their own party, but even some on the left didn't really care.

Shahjehan Khan
Qasim wasn’t the only candidate facing this type of Islamophobic rhetoric. It actually became a local and national strategy for many to win elections. A 2018 report from the Washington-based New America think tank found that since Trump announced he was running there was “a significant increase in anti-Muslim activities” which turned into violence, threats, and discriminatory laws and ordinances across the country.

[Audio]

Qasim Rashid
There's an opportunity, I believe, in America for us to make sure more folks are aware of who we are and what we stand for, the fact that Muslims are as American as apple pie. You know, African Muslims literally built this nation, uh, from the ground up. And, uh, every single war that the United States has ever fought in going back to the Revolutionary War, American Muslims fought in defense of this country. So, you know, those are the narratives that I think, you know, we need to be more deliberate about, about our integration and how we've really helped build this country.

And I think until we can be seen as American as any other person, not for our own validation, but I think for what this country is supposed to be—that more perfect union—I think we need to keep pushing forward.

[Sounds]

If you’ve been listening to this podcast religiously, so to speak, you know the drill. When Islamophobia from politicians, or in pop culture for that matter, hits 11, the trickle-down to ordinary (often ignorant) Americans has serious implications. This time around was no different.

[Audio]

In 2017, more than 40% of Muslim parents said their kids were bullied in school, and the super gross part is that half the time it actually involved a teacher or a school official. Hate crimes against American Muslims around this time skyrocketed to five times more than pre-9/11, as a result of the lingering effects of the attacks, sure, but even more, it was said, because of politics and opportunism.

And in a report released this very month from the University of California, Berkeley, almost all of the American Muslims surveyed said Islamophobia affected their emotional and mental well-being and nearly 7 in 10 said it was because of an actual personal incident. The report also said that Muslim women bear the brunt of anti-Muslim hate. I think Trump was and is responsible for a lot of that.

[Audio]

And just like what happened after 9/11, all of it was hitting pretty close to home.

Tina Khan (Amma)
I feel that everything to do with racism came out because of him.

Shahjehan Khan
Here’s Amma, reflecting on President Trump.

Tina Khan (Amma)
All these years that I had lived over here, I had never never never felt bad or scared of being, or looking at myself and seeing that I look like a Desi. But since he came, that feeling changed. It was such a, not even just a gradual change, just all of a sudden everybody changed.

Shahjehan Khan
Amma has worked in department stores since the 1990s and remembers an incident when she was helping an elderly woman try on some clothes after Trump was in office. She was with her husband, who recently had surgery on his vocal cords, so could only communicate via pen and paper.

Tina Khan (Amma)
He must have been like in his mid-seventies, it was an older guy. So he started communicating with me while his wife was trying clothes in there. And the things that he was saying, it didn't look like he was flirting with me because he was an older guy. But he said that you are a very beautiful woman. Your complexion is beautiful and this and that all kinds of…. And we talked and talked for about 15, 20 minutes in a very nice way.

Shahjehan Khan
Sorry, Amma, this dude already sounds like a creep.

Tina Khan (Amma)
And then as usual, when he said, where are you from? I said, my particular favorite thing—I am from Pakistan and I'm a Muslim. This is what I said. And on the same pad that he was writing all those beautiful things about me, on that same pad, he wrote, I hate all Muslims and walked away and never talked to me after that. Just in one second, he changed. This is what Trump did to us.

[Sounds]

Chapter 3: CHANGES


Shahjehan Khan
It’s frustrating to think that after 20 years of Islam and Muslims being on the front pages of newspapers across the country and the U.S. occupying or being at war with Afghanistan and Iraq, that Americans know so little about us.

[Sounds]

Although Islam is technically the fastest growing religion in the United States, half of U.S. adults still say Islam is not part of mainstream American society. Similarly, the American public is split over whether there is a “natural conflict” between Islam and democracy, even though a pretty substantial number of Americans reported not knowing a single Muslim in real life.

Well, here’s a few things you might not know about us, mostly according to the Pew Research Center:

[Music]

Muslims make up a little more than 1% of the U.S. population, so about three and a half million people. One-quarter have been here more multiple generations, many of whom were brought over from Africa in the the slave trade, while three-quarters are immigrants or the first-born children of immigrants, like me. Over a million Muslims have come to the U.S. since 2000 (with a stark drop-off due to the Travel Ban). By 2040, Muslims will be the nation’s second-largest religious group. And by 2050, our population is expected to double.

Kashif Shaikh
When you look at the political moment, uh, after 9/11, and then after the Trump election, I mean, they're both characterized by this anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, racial, racist, white supremacist kind of mindset.

Shahjehan Khan
Kashif Shaikh is the cofounder and president of Pillars Fund. Since 2010, Pillars fund has been “envision[ing] a society where Muslims have access to every opportunity, are free to fully embody all of their identities, and are empowered to pursue their greatest aspirations.”

Kashif Shaikh
Post-9/11, you sort of had this, um, this new wave of organizations. I think pre-9/11, you had these organizations—there's few and far between—but pre-9/11, it really felt like a lot of the resources in the communities were going towards, um, local masjids or Islamic schools, and post-9/11, given the political moment, you really started to see this new crop of leaders and organizations and civic organizations really pop up. And, um, they've just been doing phenomenal work.

Shahjehan Khan
Pillars Fund is one of these organizations.

Kashif Shaikh
I think that the Trump era was incredibly scary for a lot of people, obviously for Muslims, particularly because, you know, the then president was literally campaigning and then presided over this policy that was trying to keep Muslims out of the U.S. and so he wasn't even trying to hide that fact.

Shahjehan Khan
It’s really hard to ignore what started to happen almost immediately after Trump took office, after the shock of his campaign and election had settled and the American Muslim community, just like a good chunk of the rest of this country, started to take a long hard look at what had gotten him elected in the first place.

But it also reinvigorated an American Muslim grassroots movement that would only grow stronger.

Kashif Shaikh
You're seeing more and more young people get really active and do this work because there's also more organizations. There's more ways to make a living. There's more ways, uh, it's more acceptable to do a lot of this work. And so I think the landscape today versus what it was even 20 years ago, it's just dramatically different.

Shahjehan Khan
Pillars itself is leading the way. Since its founding, they have distributed more than $6 million in grants to other Muslim organizations and leaders who advance social good. Most recently, they supported a study alongside others by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that put hard data behind the thing we’ve always known for so long, that Muslim representation on-screen has just fucking sucked. They looked at 200 top-grossing films released between 2017 and 2019 in the U.S., UK, New Zealand, and Australia, revealing, among many other things, that

[Sounds]

just over 90% had no Muslim characters at all


of those that did, more than half had Muslims as targets of violence


less than 2% of speaking roles were given to Muslim characters, and


there were ZERO Muslim characters in animated films.



Kashif Shaikh
It's disheartening and there's no other way to react to it. The fact that these stories have been erased from popular narratives—that's I think what this tells you, is that they just are so out of touch and don't have a clue and it's kind of going to require us to push and push and push to rectify this.

Shahjehan Khan
And Pillars has actually put together a blueprint to fix these issues. They are not only working with Hollywood to sunset terror troupes, but have created fellowships to support up-and-coming Muslim artists.

Kashif Shaikh
Popular culture shapes the way that we view the world. One thing that we’ve always really tried to do at Pillars is really be proactive and tell the story of Muslims in the United States, uh, and lift up Muslim communities and really kind of share the diversity, the joy, the incredible work that our community has been engaged in for so, so long.

[Music and Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
It’s been a long time coming—and we have lots more work to do—but we can now access irreverent, nuanced, multidimensional shows like Ramy and We Are Lady Parts. We can support the work of award-winning actors, directors, and filmmakers like Mahershala Ali, Cherin Dabis, and Waad al-Kateab, and check out writers like G. Willow Wilson and Mohsin Hamid.

Elsewhere in pop culture, we are seeing more Muslim trendsetters, in comedy:

[Audio]

in music:

[Music]

not just on the news, but the fucking news anchors themselves:

[Audio]

And don’t forget sports.

[Audio]

At one point last year there were three Muslims on the roster for the Portland Trailblazers basketball team. And, in an iconic American moment, Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first American woman to compete and win a medal while wearing a hjiab at the Olympics in 2016.

I remember seeing a magazine with her on the cover one day while waiting to pick up my car and thinking, damn, that’s fucking cool.

[Sounds]

According to The Guardian, as a Black Muslim woman in a hijab on the international stage, she became "one of the best symbols against intolerance America can ever have.”

Shahjehan Khan
Folks like Serena Rasoul are making sure the entertainment industry gets it right, too.

Serena Rasoul
To me to be on a set with so many people and to have been the only Muslim was just kind of shocking.

Shahjehan Khan
Serena, an actress herself, was once cast in a prayer scene and found that the wardrobe department didn’t have any hijabs. Upon providing her own scarves and asking where the characters were supposed to be from to style them appropriately, she was told:

Serena Rasoul
“We don't know, just make them look Muslim.” And it sat with me to the extent that, it really was what kind of spurred me to want to do this, to want to found Muslim American Casting.

Shahjehan Khan
Muslim American Casting, the first U.S. organization of its kind, has the express mission to provide diverse Muslim talent and as-needed consulting services to Hollywood studios.

Serena Rasoul
We just launched January 21st, 2021, and that was the day the Muslim Ban was repealed. And so, we really wanted to launch on a day of significance and that was a very important day, for me and for our industry and for our community.

Shahjehan Khan
Serena wanted to create a space not only for Muslim stories to be told accurately but also to correct the disinformation about Muslims and Muslim talent on set and in Hollywood boardrooms.

Serena Rasoul
I really wanted to focus on the casting but I found myself having to explain a lot. And so the consulting arm, it's become a beast of its own. There are a lot of casting directors, there are producers, there are filmmakers who just lack some just very basic, um, information with regards to our population.

Shahjehan Khan
Working with the Improbable Players inspired me to pursue acting and voiceover more seriously over the last several years, a dream I thought I had lost way back when. While I’ve slowly been building my career from scratch, I can say it would have been cool to have Serena or someone from Muslim American Casting in the room in 2015 when I auditioned for my first feature film here in Boston. A film, no surprise, about the fucking Boston Marathon bombing.

[Audio]

I was so desperate that I said “yes” when asked if I would audition with a Pakistani accent for a cab driver role. Of course when I got there, it said “Arab cab driver” at the top of the script (cuz, you know, we’re all the fucking same). The whole audition turned out to be a group of white women laughing at me, even telling me to take my glasses off to look “less smart.” It felt disgusting, and I’m ashamed to admit that I did that just to get in the room and see what it was like. But I’ve persisted. I’ve got a fuckin’ IMDB now. It’s been incredible to be in the same space as legends like Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and Leonardo DiCaprio doing their thing, and the access to better and bigger roles for POCs is only growing.

In fact, next month I’ve got a small part in a film in New York about a Pakistani immigrant couple, with a South Asian writer and director.

[Sounds]

And, since a lot of it is actually in Urdu, guess who I got hired as the language consultant? Yep, my dad! Agha is officially on the payroll.

(Break)

Standing on the shoulders of earlier generations, American Muslims are definitely making waves across American culture, but perhaps none as momentous as in the social justice and political sectors. Here’s Kashif again.

Kashif Shaikh
What has happened in the last five years since Trump, I do think that it's been another kind of uptick in motivation for young activists and Muslim leaders to kind of really take on even bigger challenges.

[Audio]

Shahjehan Khan
Across the country, Trump’s election spurred champions of inclusivity to run for office in the following years. Because of widespread anti-Muslim sentiment, Muslims also ran in record numbers. One group estimated that 100 were on the ballot in 2018 alone.

Mehreen Butt was one of them. In 2017 Mehreen became the first American Muslim woman to be elected to a municipal office in the state of Massachusetts. Like Qasim Rashid, she also faced hate and ignorance on the campaign trail. Just a note, Mehreen is the sibling of my producer, Asad.

Mehreen Butt
I think there's a lot of people that will always see me as a threat. I will say that the hardest part about running and then rerunning and being an elected is that people just have preconceived notions of you and they just see you as a threat, just because you're different.

Shahjehan Khan
The same thing happened to Afroz Khan, another Muslim who ran successfully for a locally elected position in Massachusetts.

Afroz Khan
In terms of religion, it only came out I would say when—sometimes it's those that are on any articles that came out. In the comments from people, there would be things like, um, you know, are you going to bring Sharia law? But that was one big thing. And the other one was, how did I feel about Israel?

Shahjehan Khan
Afroz is an Indian American engineer and the first Muslim woman to serve on the Newburyport, Massachusetts, City Council. Newburyport, like Wakefield where Mehreen serves, is a white ass town, like more than 90%, sorta like Acton and Boxborough were when I was growing up.

Afroz Khan
I think you're held up to a higher standard when you're not like everyone else, not like everyone else at that table. You are looked at as maybe not qualified. And I'm not saying anyone ever said that to me, but there's always this kind of, this kind of left out there, you know, do I deserve to be there? And the question is you absolutely not only deserve to be there, but you are somebody that more people might even feel more compelled to talk with. And I feel like that's, that's a tool, that’s powerful. What better way to have their voice than being someone that listened and had them talk to us so that we can be the ones to push what they think?

Shahjehan Khan
Two of the most prominent American Muslims who have won elected office are Ilhan Omar from Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan—both Democratic Congresswomen and both members of “The Squad.” Here’s Mehreen again.

Mehreen Butt
I think The Squad are just amazing. I think all of them winning in 2018 and showing what true leadership and true advocacy and representation means.

Shahjehan Khan
The squad—a group of badass women of color that just by their mere existence have been challenging the Congressional status quo, let alone what they stand for. They are immensely revered (by progressives) and despised (by, well, fucking racists; there, I said it).

Mehreen Butt
I just think they're so strategic and they are changing the game of representation.

Shahjehan Khan
And representation is what it's all about. Whether it’s a school board or town council or the fucking U.S. Congress, Muslims deserve a seat at the table. In 2020 alone, 57 Muslims won elections across the U.S.

[Audio]

American Muslims turned out in droves to support Joe Biden, helping make Trump only a single-term president, already one fucking term too many.

Mehreen Butt
You have these populations of Muslims that if you have voter turnout, whether it be, you know, the young Arabs in Detroit or the Black Muslims in Philadelphia or the South Asian Muslims in Atlanta, I think we will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Shahjehan Khan
Politicians are starting to understand the power of courting the Muslim vote, but there’s definitely still work to be done. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris revoked the Muslim Ban on day one of their term, calling it a “stain on our national conscience.” However, despite successfully appointing the first-ever American Muslim federal judge, at this very moment, President Biden’s nominee for Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration, Dilawar Syed, is being blocked by Congress because, you guessed it, he’s Muslim.

[Sounds]

It makes me think, how the fuck is this still a thing?! How is a blanket bias applied to a group that is so ridiculously varied? American Muslims are extremely diverse—racially, ethnically, socially, culturally, and spiritually. In fact, the strongest common denominators amongst American Muslims beyond a belief in God and Prophet Muhammad seem to be working to protect the environment, fighting to achieve social justice, and rejecting extremism enacted in the name of Islam.

At the end of the day, most immigrants came to this country looking for opportunities and ways to give back. And they have given back. People like my dad, Agha.

Malik Khan (Agha)
The basic principles of Islam are fundamentally built on ethics and care for each other. And our holy book, it says again and again that Islam is a religion of nature.

Shahjehan Khan
You could say Agha has been an activist his whole life here in America, and he loves to just break it down super simply for people.

Malik Khan (Agha)
It tries to enhance the good that's in our nature. And there's rarely any teachings in there, you know, when it comes to these issues, which does not appeal to common sense. It’s just a religion to make you a better human being and to keep yourself cleansed, spiritually as well as physically. That's what it is. So, I would have liked you guys to be certainly not at all ashamed of it.

[Music]

Shahjehan Khan
Unlike the shame I sometimes felt at my Brownness, my name, even my family at times, it kinda seems like the younger generations of American Muslims feel empowered to just be themselves, unapologetically in a way that I don’t recall when I was growing up. Islam is now kinda hip, even. I like to think that we’re watching culture change before our very eyes, and I certainly hope it keeps going that way.

[Audio]

[Commercial]

Chapter 4: HEADSPACE

I’ve changed so much before many people’s eyes, many of whom you’ve heard from throughout this whole series. But it has also been a deeply personal and fulfilling exercise in seeing that change through my own eyes, too.

From the day we started working on King of the World, I knew that I wanted to speak with a Muslim mental health professional to help us, and help me, make sense of the last 20 years.

Mona Masood
9/11 has changed the entire definition of Muslim mental health.

Shahjehan Khan
Dr. Mona Masood is board certified in general adult psychiatry.

Mona Masood
And this is something that is either spoken or has become such a part of your psyche. It's like reading between the lines of everything that is being said.

Shahjehan Khan
Mona is an outpatient psychiatrist in the greater Philadelphia area and a board member of the nonprofit Muslim Wellness Foundation, which provides mental health educational services to the community.

Mona Masood
Why I ended up choosing psychiatry was really because it is the only field I find in all of medicine that prioritizes the human connection, the understanding of not only humanity and what makes us uniquely human—our emotions, our feelings, our choices, all of these different things—but also that it centers, and it allows, and it gives permission for imperfection.

Shahjehan Khan
How do you distinguish Muslim wellness from like wellness?

Mona Masood
Hmm. With anything that has a prefix like that, whether, you know, we're going to say Muslim or any other, uh, group, we're acknowledging a unique intersection. You know, we’re going to have the rights, the rituals, we're going to have the beliefs, all of these kind of basic tenants, we'll have all of that. And then we'll have a practical application of religion. It'll again become incredibly nuanced and individual, because everyone defines both being Muslim and being well as very individual experiences.

Shahjehan Khan
There really wasn’t much research related to Muslim mental health at all before 9/11, and a robust understanding of it has only emerged in the last five years or so. One notable study on American Muslims came out on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It found that “half the study participants had depression serious enough to warrant further assessment.”

And, just this past September, a study published by the American Medical Association stated, U.S. Muslim adults were two times more likely to report a history of a suicide attempt compared with those from other faiths.

Mona Masood
What we do find in these studies is that not only do you have this intersection of Islam and mental health, you actually have all of these other intersections come in, too, such as the immigrant experience or the first-generation experience or being a Black Muslim or being indigenous Muslim or a convert. So you'll have all of these different ones that deserve their own studies, but we're just starting to even compile that we even exist, that these intersections even should have value to be studied and how they can really impact, you know, not only our understanding of the self as a Muslim, but, um, understanding of what it means to feel well and grounded in that identity.

Shahjehan Khan
That we even exist. That these intersections even should have value to be studied.

When Mona said those words, I felt something shift within me, kind of like when you don’t even realize you are holding a bunch of tension within you, like the way you start to relax into a mindfulness exercise.

Along those same lines, why do you think it's important for, for Muslims to take mental health seriously?

Mona Masood
Mental health is not a new concept in Islam as much as we may rationalize that it is. The fact of the matter is mental health is throughout our scripture. The concepts of grief, sorrow, anxiety, all of these things are mentioned in not only the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him), but also throughout Quran.

Shahjehan Khan
All just part of the human condition. I’d never considered Islam and emotions this way, that maybe our community could’ve been discussing mental health all along.

Mona Masood
And so these are not actually arcane concepts to talk about mental health within the Islamic context, even a historical context. It’s just something that we did not give intention, we did not look at with purpose and with, um, the attempt of understanding that we're actually talking about the same thing, Just because it's coming from a psychiatrist versus it's coming from the Friday sermon, it doesn't mean that these are two different concepts. They're actually the same.

Shahjehan Khan
My mind was suddenly flooded with bits and pieces of the countless khutbahs (aka sermons) I’d been to throughout my childhood, whether at the Wayland mosque or elsewhere, and how far away they had seemed from the personal struggles I was going through during those teenage years, or throughout my 20s, when I’d find myself at the mosque. I also thought a lot about history and legacy, family, generational trauma, and the need to be something “bigger,” to do something more meaningful, because leading “just another normal life” was not okay. You’ll remember the story about my Nana, my maternal grandfather, and how he was the mayor of Lahore, a guy with a portrait in the courthouse, a guy who was always in the back of my mind as someone I could never live up to.

What are some, uh, mental health challenges that are unique to the American Muslim community? I'm thinking about discrimination, about race, about foreign policy, about, you know, and I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into, into those, but just if I were to ask you that question outright.

Mona Masood
I think the overarching issue that seems to be present in most of my, um, Muslim patients that come in and talk to me for their mental health is this idea of representation and this incredible pressure of having to represent an entire community in some way or another. That being an individual and the needs and the desires and the goals of an individual get lost in having the pressure of representing something larger than life, such as an entire faith. Our successes are not just our individual successes. They are the American Muslim successes. Our failures, our mistakes, are also representative of the entire community.

Shahjehan Khan
That pressure, man. A terrible act by one so-called Muslim means we’re all violent, while a celebration of Muslim achievements gets called propaganda.

Mona Masood
And that is a very unique and very tough position to be in when you're trying to advocate for your individual mental health. Just because you are a part of this minority group, it doesn't mean that you as an individual don't have your own story, your own narrative, your own traumas, your own dynamics, all of these different things that we allow and we talk about with, um, nonminorities and we allow them to, you know, have an individual narrative. That very much gets lost for American Muslims.

Shahjehan Khan
To be honest, some of this stuff had come up in my early attempts at therapy, but it was in sort of a weirder, “Oh, it must be so hard for you because of, you know, your background, your family, your struggles”, or whatever, but when Mona was saying this stuff to me, it sounded like, “Hey, this was all so hard because of our background, our families, our struggles.”

Mona Masood
Having to choose what you prioritize as identity. There's all of these different layers. You have culture, you have race, you have religion. And then even within religion, it is how do you identify whether—and I'm not just talking about like what sect or what school of thought—I'm talking about how you even identify as Muslim. What does being Muslim even mean? And that is such an individual definition. And then you get to the core and then you have the humanity of it all. And you're having to navigate normal human emotions outside of just religion and identity.

Shahjehan Khan
I think it’s no secret that choosing a therapist is tough

[Sounds]

but when you add this other layer—the “you don’t have to tell me because I already get it” layer—that’s when you start to really make breakthroughs.

Mona Masood
When Trump came into office, it was not only a reminder of the trauma of 9/11. It was another way of saying, “You will never be off the hook for something you never did. You will always be paying a price.”

Shahjehan Khan
You will never be off the hook for something you never did.

Ooof. That’s it right there. I was held accountable since day 2, when those kids asked me what my people did. And it was still happening to my family, to many Muslim families, all those years later.

(pause/transition)

Mona Masood
It's remarkable that we somehow maintained and cared about who we were and cared about this country and wanted better for it and participated.

Shahjehan Khan
Mona kept putting a lot of stuff I’d been feeling into words, the words of a medical professional, yes, but words that held more weight, meant more to me because of who she is and who I am. She was saying that despite all the awful stuff, everything we discussed during this whole series, we don’t fucking give up. I didn’t give up, even if it felt like I did so many times.

Mona Masood
And we cared about not just our own things, like, you know, the Muslim travel ban, but we cared about social justice and we, we cared about, women's rights, and we cared about so many different intersections for other people who were oppressed and marginalized. During this time, it’s remarkable to me, but it’s also telling, because as a psychiatrist I see this all the time. Empathy is when somebody is traumatized and when somebody has gone through something so vulnerable and so raw, you can't help but see it in other people who are going through similar situations. You know, empathy is so much greater than fear. It is what creates, uh, bonds and progress and what gets us out of these dire circumstances and, and why human beings have been so resilient as a species for so many centuries is not because of fear and power; it’s actually because of empathy. Cause we’ve cared enough to allow our species to keep going on.

Shahjehan Khan
Wow. Um, I'm just, I'm really blown away by a lot of your answers.

I started to tell Mona everything—my early life and parents’ story, high school identity issues, 9/11 and the aftermath with those kids at AB, all the mental health stuff, starting the band and everything that came with it, then getting sober, early recovery, and all those challenges.

Mona Masood
We're [the] sum of so many different experiences, you know, coming back to the psychiatric perspective of identity, our psychological identity is formed very much in our late adolescence. It really starts kind of individuating when we're young adults in our early twenties and, and very late teens. And it's remarkable because if something so huge as 9/11 happens in that kind of time frame and we're dealing with the idea of who am I within this vast system, and who am I as a minority, who am I amongst all of these things, it can be pretty traumatic.

When I talk about trauma with white patients as opposed to my Black patients as opposed to, um, various different, um, you know, immigrant cultures, in amongst my white patients, they will have a traumatic event. They will talk about like in an traumatic event, um, whether it was an assault or abuse or anything, there will be an event. But for us, even though we are talking right now about 9/11, there's been so many microtraumas that we’re almost [sic] ripple effects or the aftershocks of 9/11, that we've also absorbed and have created this mental health crisis or have affected our wellness.

Shahjehan Khan
I even told Mona a story you haven’t heard yet, about something that happened almost a decade after I’d abruptly returned to the States from Lahore:

Right around 2015—you know, I was at the five-year mark, which is kind of a critical point, I think, in recovery—I took a trip to Pakistan and I actually went to an AA meeting in Pakistan.

Mona Masood
Wow.

Shahjehan Khan
Like one of the only ones in the entire country, because it's so stigmatized. It's in secret, you know, you have to like find it on WhatsApp or whatever. And I took a look around the room and I was like, “Wow, wait a minute. Like one of these people could be my dad.” It's not that I hadn't met other like, you know, Muslim people or Brown people or whatever, but it was very few and far between.

I’ll never forget what it was like to finally walk into a room where everyone looked like me. They asked me to share my story, something I had done hundreds of times before that, but it just meant so much more to be looking out at a group of people who, if things were just a bit different, could have easily been my neighbors, my siblings, or my parents.

And then I sort of came back home to this like Trump situation.

Mona Masood
Yep. Did you have a moment where you came to the realization that you couldn't rationalize this anymore? That you had to address it, that you needed to work on this, and how did that happen?

Shahjehan Khan
I think I had a few of those, actually. I think, um, I knew about it even in high school; I would say even within six months of starting to get high and stuff, I knew that I was latching onto it in a way that other people weren't, you know. And I always joke that it was actually the Desi kids that got me high. But not to throw any of them under the bus, but it was, you know, partitions between the Desi kids and the white kids. But for me, um, the first big, big, big one was dropping out of college, coming home, and just being straight up with my parents that, “Hey, like I'm smoking weed every day. I'm super depressed.” And that was my first real experience with getting, you know, getting a therapist and stuff. So that was moment number one.

Mona Masood
I mean, how was that for you to admit that to parents, because you mentioned the word shame?

Shahjehan Khan
Yeah. I think, I mean, by that point it was still pretty hard, right? Because they knew what was up by then, you know, in a way. But we hadn't, like you said, we didn't have really the language of it. I don’t know if I had specifically said to them, “Hey, I’m really sad. I don’t feel good,” you know? And other things I've actually learned from doing this show. I had completely forgotten a whole other litany of things that took place, namely that day—both of my, it's funny because both of my parents confirmed this story separately because I interviewed them separately—that I came home that day and I was completely distraught. And like I was so, and I don't remember, even after they told me this, I don't remember any of this. And these kids cornered me at a party and basically threatened to kick my ass. And my friends brought me—and I still, I don't remember any of this, at all.

Mona Masood
And that is incredible because that's a level of self-preservation that is very, very indicative of trauma. I mean, when I talk about these kind of momentous time periods, and it's interesting because, you know, 9/11, like the way that I was talking to you, I was asking about, you know, how did you approach your parents on it? It's interesting because your mind went to this kind of almost dissociative time period from 9/11 and it's, you know, both of these things were, it seems like occurring simultaneously, where there was a bit of, you know, whether we call it self-medicating or coping or whatever, in whatever ways that you could.

Shahjehan Khan
Self-preservation.

[Sounds]

Chapter 5: RELATIONSHIPS

Is that what I was doing all this time? Like, not just after 9/11, but for the last 20 years, is that what so many of us have been desperately trying to do?

I think that’s a part of it. Many of the new habits I’ve formed over the last ten years (including exercise and meditation) certainly feel like acts of preservation both big and small.

I know that my creative endeavors, especially The Kominas, you could say, are a radical and unapologetic act of preservation. I can’t believe we’ve been a band for almost 18 years, basically forming at the time when my life really started to fall apart. Here’s Basim:

Basim Usmani
That's an important thing to meditate on is the history, the shared history we've had with each other, and how much, how much we've been through, you know, and how little other people understand. And it's crazy to me because I definitely feel as the years go on, I don't think that like other people will understand me as much as, as Shahjehan or Sunny or, or, or, or Karna or even some of our previous bandmates who I ended on bad terms with, you know what I mean? Even those guys, they know me a certain way.

Shahjehan Khan
And here’s Karna.

Karna Ray
I think the greatest portions of your hardship of becoming a person—I was shielded from a lot of your bad behavior. And I know that like a lot of the project of your adult life has been shaping yourself in, in response to that behavior at the time. And I’m really happy that you've grown into like a very wonderful, caring, thoughtful, respectful person.

Shahjehan Khan
And while I have indeed grown a lot, I think that even my closest, most intimate relationships have room to grow.

Karna Ray
For the longest time you obviously have your other like communities in places where you would express very personal things about your past and about your, about your struggles, whether it's like AA groups or other things. And like, when we would try to ask you about them, it seemed like they were reserved for people. I always wanted that place to be with us as a band. And maybe obviously for a number of historical reasons between all of us it was never the place for that. Uh, but I just, I always wished that I had a little bit more access. Cause you know, I love you Shajy. I just wish I knew you better.

Shahjehan Khan
The difference now is I see this stuff more as an opportunity than a pain point.

[Sounds]

I mean, what a beautiful thing to have friends like Karna who just want to know me better? Does that mean I’m an adult now?

The Kominas are still together and I’m as much a part of the band as ever. In fact, we just did our first show last month after a two-year hiatus, due mostly to COVID, and we’re gradually talking about what’s next for us as a band.

And speaking of intimate relationships:
Can you—everything you just said? What was it like when we first went out? Well, the first date, just tell me about the first date.

Lauren Tereshko
You just really wanted me to know that you were in a band once and you were cool and that the band had met some success. And that I could watch a documentary of said band, if I was so inclined.

Shahjehan Khan
Against all odds, in 2013, just a couple years into my sobriety, I met a girl named Lauren. Well, more like I awkwardly stared at her while we were helping a mutual friend move around some furniture, and a couple months (yes, months) later, we went on our first date.

Just one note: We couldn’t stop laughing during our interview so we stopped. She then recorded some questions our producers posed to her about me.

Lauren Tereshko
I think that being a sensitive person is a strength in a lot of ways. And that being compassionate and empathetic is, um, a very good quality to have, and is something that he has in abundance. There's been a lot of instances in which we have, um, disagreed. We sort of like to argue with each other sort of just as a hobby, as a fun thing to do. We like to have discussions and disagree with each other. That’s something that I like about our relationship the most is, is just the ability to grow and experience things and learn from each other.

Shahjehan Khan
I don’t know how else to say this—she helped me be a fucking better me, man, one that I didn’t even know was in there. She laughed with me, cried with me, and has continued to support this crazy ass life I’ve put together.

Lauren Tereshko
Obviously, he's also, um, incredibly multitalented. He's a talented musician. Um, he's a very creative person, a talented writer. Um, he's definitely a dreamer. He has wild dreams and he definitely chases them in the way that he lives his life, which is inspiring to me.

Shahjehan Khan
And guess what?! She loves music, especially music with guitars in it.

Lauren Tereshko
Luckily, if you drew a Venn diagram of our musical tastes, it would have enough overlap that we don't want to murder each other. Just kidding. No, we like a lot of the same music. Um, and that's also really fun to experience with him. Um, you know, just the joy of music and sharing something that you're both really passionate about. I think, um, again brings you closer in, in a relationship.

Shahjehan Khan
And so over the cold-ass literal polar vortex weekend of January 5th, 2018—on my seventh sobriety and parents’ 39th anniversaries—we celebrated with a kick-ass Pakistani-American wedding.

[Music]

Mona Masood
Unless we have empathy and we get normalized and we, and we realize that what we're going through is something that people see and acknowledge and comfort and care about, mental health can only end in one way, which is that we feel like we don't deserve to continue to live. That is the human experience.

[Sounds]

But since it is so internal, the reason that mental health stigma really needs to be addressed is, unless we put words to these feelings, unless we find ways to talk about our inner worlds, we’re not going to be able to feel grounded. We're not going to be able to survive. We need one another; we need empathy in order to survive.

Shahjehan Khan
It’s hard to say whether a little more empathy that day in high school was all I needed, but I know that I just wish I had the language to talk about it, to feel like what I was feeling wasn’t my sole burden to bear, that I wasn’t terminally unique, that my fear and sadness and anger were just as valid as anybody else’s on 9/11. One thing I know for sure though, I needed to talk about it. With someone, anyone that would listen.

So, what did my people do? My people have done a lot actually. I’ve done a lot these past 20 years. It’s been a character-building, challenging, and revolutionary two decades for all of us, definitely for me. So many of you including folks I might not have expected, have already said that this story, my story, our story resonates with you in one way or another. It’s just one out of millions of stories about being someone like me in the last 20 years, just please remember that.
Thankfully, according to Mr. Green, my high school teacher you met in episode 1, it sounds like things are different now at AB.

Mr. Green
Acton and Boxborough, in a way that is really wonderful, has become, they've become incredibly diverse communities. And the world history cohort of teachers really wanted to look at how Muslims were being portrayed in the curriculum. But we really looked at some topics that we had—that are very traditional in world history classes, like the Crusades, looking a little bit at opportunities to study medieval Africa, so Mali, Ghana, and to really make sure that students were learning some of the basics of Islam so that as these headlines were surfacing, that they had some point of comparison.

My seniors, who are 17 and 18 years old, were born after 9/11. And so as these things become history topics, the question becomes, how do we remember them? And so the reason I feel like what you're doing is so wonderful is we need to pay attention to how we remember this stuff before we don't have the opportunity to do so. And it’s just—and, I don’t know, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic,

[Sounds]

it really strikes me to look at a classroom full of young people now in that same building, where this went down and it just, it isn't anything to them.

Chapter 6: CONCLUSION

Noorjehan Khan
I mean it's been bizarre to listen to some of our memories, you know, via professional podcast, but it's, it's really cool.

Shahjehan Khan
My sister, Noona.

Noorjehan Khan
We as a family, it's been nice to rehear our story and kind of hear your own thinking on it has helped us do our own thinking on it. But I feel like, you know, all that being said, it's not like you've reached your final point. There's still so much growth that, I mean, I would hope you're still looking to do, and you're excited to do in that sense. I think you're more comfortable in your own skin in some ways. I mean, you seem more interested to get feedback and have sometimes more tougher conversations than maybe the rest of us want to have sometimes.

I wouldn't say you've like found your place, but I think you seem to be more open to the idea that you can find multiple places. I mean, if you look at kind of the three siblings if we’re on like a spectrum of outward Desiness, I would say Meryum is probably on one end where she’s, you know, very involved in her Pakistani Muslim self is very present in her life and her day-to-day existence and the people she surrounds herself with. Versus you’re kind of a good medium representation of you enjoy all aspects of your identity and you show that and you share that with all the people around you.

[Sounds]

Shahjehan Khan
I didn’t realize I’d have as much hope as I do now at the end of this series. I honestly thought it would be a little more of an ambivalent ending, but I even dare to say I think the future is bright. It seems like there are a lot more spaces for people like young Shahjehan, young Saj, or young Malik to wrestle with the big questions in life. So for this entire series, through all these interviews, and just putting this whole damn thing together, I’ve obviously been thinking about me a lot. Let’s be real, for better or worse, it may be my favorite topic.

BUT, this experience has also made me think a lot about my 6-year-old nephew, my sister Meryum’s son Zeeshan.

So you have a son now, obviously.

Meryum Khan
It's true.

Shahjehan Khan
It’s true.

Meryum Khan
You are familiar with him.

Shahjehan Khan
I’m familiar with him. Very familiar with him.

Quick note, Meryum now has two sons. Zeeshan has a baby brother, Eesa, which means Jesus. So Meryum is indeed Mary, mother of Jesus.

How do you think, if you haven't already, that you will talk to him about his identity? Like when he grows up a little bit. Is this something that you've thought of?

Meryum Khan
Yeah. It’s absolutely something that we think about and we talk about. Even recently he's just in kindergarten and in December they basically did an entire unit on Christmas, but they framed it as family winter traditions. So it was Christmas or Hanukkah. That's what they want you to talk about, right? So as a Muslim, unless Ramadan is in winter, you don't necessarily have a family winter tradition that's religious based. And so it was so frustrating because for days and days, they were like, think about your family tradition, draw a picture of your family tradition, and what do you like to do in the winter in December? I think that that's a question that's always there if you are raising a child in a community where you're not in the majority. Like Zeeshan, he made a comment one day that was like, “My skin color is like a mix of your skin color and Baba’s skin color.” And I was like, “Yeah, you're right. That's cool.” You know, so he notices things like that. We don't discourage him from talking about things like that. I feel like when we were growing up was a little different, it was, you knew people looked different, but I felt like our parents would be like, “Don't talk about it,” you know what I mean? I think he's still young enough that everything is great, right? So like everyone's name is great and everybody like has different interests and that's fine. And everybody's family is different and that's fine. So I think it'll be, it'll obviously be a challenge as he gets older, but it is something that we think about a lot and are trying to figure out as we go.

Shahjehan Khan
If you were to like describe 9/11 to Zeeshan and kind of its effects on the American Muslim community, what do you think you would say?

[Theme]

Meryum Khan
So I guess like at his current age, I wouldn't describe 9/11 to him, but assuming he was a little bit older and at some point he's going to learn about it and you know probably have some questions about it. So I guess that I would, and I don't know if this is because I'm a lawyer, this is how I think, but this is the first thing that came to my head is that I would make a timeline of the events that happened and walk him through, “this is what happened, this is what happened.” And then see what his initial reactions are, sort of see what he's learning in school about it, but I don't know. I think it’ll be tough.

Shahjehan Khan
Well, Zeeshan, when you get older, I got a little story ready for you to listen to, my dude. Maybe it won’t be so tough if we do it together.

END


King of the World is a production of Rifelion Media. Today’s show was produced by me, Asad Butt, and Lindsy Gamble with sound design and sound mixing by Mark Annotto. 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. Thanks again to my family—Amma, Agha, Meryum, Noona, and Zeeshan. And of course my wife, Lauren. Special thanks to Qasim Rashid,
Kashif Shaikh, Serena Rasoul, Mehreen Butt, Afroz Khan, Mona Masood, Basim Usmani, Karna Ray, and Mr. Green. We’ll have links to all of them in the show notes. Learn more about King of the World and the other exciting projects we’re working on at rifelion.com. Thank you so much for listening to King of the World. I’m Shahjehan Khan.

[Commercial]