Ten years later, I still haven’t watched the video and the comparisons to the caricature of dead terrorists have since subsided however, that same toxic internet culture, rampant with explicit and implicit anti-Muslim bigotry, has gone nowhere.Īs a now twenty-year-old American-Muslim that is characteristically outspoken, I’ve almost accepted online hatred as normal because it is seemingly so inescapable. In 2009, Jeff Dunham’s “Achmed the Dead Terrorist” was the ninth most-watched video of all time on YouTube. Growing up, though, introducing myself would often be met with “Ahmed? Like Achmed the Dead Terrorist?” I had never seen the video that they were referencing, but that didn’t change the fact that a comedian’s distasteful attempt at social commentary began to shape my coming of age. My name is Ziad Ahmed, and I’m unapologetically American-Muslim. I don’t remember when my name became an invitation to compare me to a puppet terrorist, but perhaps that’s because it still feels like yesterday.
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