Here’s a great article. I highly recommend checking it out.
First, here’s the introduction, by Lisa Belkin…
This day will always bring more questions than answers. How to explain to your child what happened on a crystalline morning eight years ago? And if your child is Muslim, those questions have added layers, and more complicated answers. In a guest blog today, Moina Noor (a freelance journalist who blogs about public education at NorwalkNet.com) describes trying to make sense of it for her young son, while still trying to understand it all herself.
… and here’s the article itself, by Moina Noor:
“Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child”
Moina Noor
September 11, 2009 — The New York Times
Recently on the morning drive to school my 8-year-old son asked me a question I’ve been dreading since he was a baby, “Mom, what happened on 9/11?”
Mass murder is impossible to explain to yourself, let alone a child. But how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?
Bilal was just 8 months old when September 11 happened. He was just starting to crawl and put everything in sight into his mouth, and I remember having to peel my gaze away from the television screen and remind myself to keep a watchful eye on where he lay nearby.
After Bilal was born I viewed everything — especially current events — through the lens of parenthood. I knew the world had changed irreparably on 9/11, and while I mourned the innocent and raged against my crazy coreligionists, my nagging anxiety was for my son.
Even in those early surreal hours after the attacks when images of towers falling and long-bearded men in caves flooded the television screen, I knew that Bilal’s childhood would not be like mine.
When I was growing up in …
article continued here.
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