For me, 9/11 began with religion: after my clock radio alarm gave me the first hint that something had gone terribly wrong, I knelt by my bed to pray that God would watch over the affected people. Then I went and turned on the TV just in time to see the first tower fall.

Religion remained a persistent element of my day. Like many people, I spent much of 9/11 watching television news. This I did in the company of many of my co-religionists at the LDS Institute of Religion at Arizona State University, crammed together on the floor of a room usually filled with friendly conversation, but not on that day. I had just begun my junior year.

Eventually I left the Institute to go to class, more than half expecting it to be canceled. It was not. When someone asked the professor why, she said something to this effect: “The point of terrorism is to make people afraid. If we get scared, the terrorists win.”

My professor’s own 9/11 story gave an unfortunate glimpse of things to come. She had come to Arizona State from India by way of a British university education, and she typically wore a sari to class. Apparently someone had approached her that morning in the hall and said, “How can you wear that today?” She was justly indignant at the assumption that her traditional clothing somehow aligned her with the people behind the attacks on the World Trade Center. Another student in the class, nervously courageous, responded to this story by asking our professor to teach us about her clothing. I’d had the same professor the previous semester—for a class on Shakespeare, king of the Western canon—and her clothing had never come up.

Four days after 9/11, the association of non-Western clothing with the 9/11 attacks had tragic consequences when Frank Roque shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi in nearby Mesa, AZ. Sodhi was a Sikh, with the traditional turban and beard—which of course have absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 hijackers. He was planting flowers in front of his gas station when he died. (State of Formation contributor Valarie Kaur has made an award-winning documentary, Divided We Fall, that discusses Sodhi’s murder and the subsequent outpouring of community support for his family.)

I was apoplectic when I learned of Sodhi’s death. It seemed so… pointless. Such a waste of human life, brought about by another human being’s blend of anger and cultural illiteracy. A peaceful man killed as vengeance for mass murder. Hadn’t we seen enough death for one week?

Then, as time passed, and most Americans had learned that the 9/11 attackers had claimed to be acting in the name of Islam, I saw fear and prejudice about Islam begin to spread. My own experience on 9/11 led me to believe that in most instances this was a case of mistaken identity only slightly more subtle than those directed at my professor and Balbir Singh Sodhi. Holding approximately 1.5 billion very diverse Muslims responsible for the actions of 19 young men—well, it doesn’t get much more unjust than that.

Moreover, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I come from a tradition in which my nineteenth-century Mormon forebears—some of them my ancestors—were driven forcibly from the state of Missouri under wintery conditions, later to be driven from the United States altogether for what was then (if only for three more years) part of Mexico. Their beliefs had pushed the promise of religious freedom in the First Amendment past the breaking point, and having this history in my blood made me feel a kinship for other religious groups put in that position.

Figuring out how to stand up for religious freedom, as something that belongs to all Americans, including Muslims, hasn’t really been a straightforward process for me.

For one, I’ve simply had to learn about Islam—and although I now know much more than I did on 9/11, I still have a long way to go. Then comes the challenge of learning how to talk to people who still feel uncomfortable about Islam, and I’m not sure I’ve got that one figured out. I myself am hardly free of prejudices, so lecturing other people about theirs can feel a bit hypocritical. I’ve written about these challenges in an earlier post for State of Formation.

Now, ten years after 9/11, probably the biggest thing I’ve learned is the importance, not to mention the extreme difficulty, of trying to understand people who think, believe, and act differently than I do—and not only when the differences turn out to be more harmless than I might have initially suspected.

Growing up American in the late 20^th century equipped me very poorly for this challenge, by teaching me that I deserved to have things my way. The 9/11 attacks exposed a cultural vulnerability by showing us that things sometimes go disastrously not our way.

It’s perfectly understandable that people respond to this vulnerability with hate, fear, or denial, but at the same time, perhaps this very vulnerability is just the common ground we need, because it may be the only place where we can really encounter difference on its own terms. What courage it takes to come willingly to that place and then to listen before speaking!

Ten years after 9/11, in spite of many good efforts, the question remains open of whether Americans can even come together in that place, never mind meet others there. What must we do? Can we even do it? I hope so.

And there is reason to hope: Rana Singh Sodhi, Balbir’s brother, has spent the decade since 9/11 not in bitter recrimination, but in fighting for the ideal of religious freedom that brought his family to America in the first place. (Rana Sodhi, too, is the subject of a documentary, A Dream in Doubt.)

Let us draw courage from him, and the many others like him, who strive for forgiveness and understanding even—and especially—when a sense of outraged justice seems to call out for vindication.