Abanty Farzana writes for New Youth Connections, a magazine for teens and by teens in New York City. During her interview with In the Mix, she talked about her writing, her religion (Islam), her personal experiences with racism, and what it means for a nation to be truly united.

On why she writes, and how it helps with healing:

The best thing about this job is that I get to write and that's what I want to do. And even if I don't choose journalism as my career, I'll choose something in writing or English because I just love it. So that's the best thing. And to have so many other people, interns here who are also high school students who also like to write and who are different than me. That's just cool to get to work with them. And they hear my views and I hear their views and it's just, it just works well together.

My writing has helped me express myself because I can write about my emotions, my feelings. That's what my article was about. It was about how I felt about the attacks, and about the biased attacks, and if I was scared, and if I was sad. I had so many different emotions at the time that I wrote about all of them, and it was sort of a release for me. You know, I wrote about it, and people read it and people understood what I was going through.

On Islam:

Islam is a very peaceful religion. Okay, well the hijackers were Muslims. They said they did it in the name of God, for all the Muslim people. But it's a cover. There's nowhere in Islam where it says, "Oh, you can kill people." Islam teaches us that the only way, the only reason we should use violence, if we ever have to resort to violence, is for defense. That's if someone hits us, we're not just going to stand there. I mean, try to use non-violence first. But if that still doesn't work, then you can resort to violence. But it's a very peaceful religion. In the Koran, it says violence is bad. Killing people is bad.

In school, they teach us a lot about Christianity and Judaism. They talk a little about Islam, but it's a difficult religion to understand. But I think that teachers should explain it a little more than they do, just so people will understand it. Many people, they just know we have to cover ourselves and we have to pray 5 times a day. But they don't really know why we do these things or what else we do. I mean, there's more to it than is explained, not only in school but in the media. You don't always hear about Islamic holidays and what happens in other aspects of Islamic life.

Teachers should explain Islam more in class. They should give more lessons on that or [make it] as important as they make Christianity and Judaism, as long as they teach those religions, they should also teach Islam just as much.

For me the song "My Religion" was very meaningful because it expressed my emotions at the time. Like the lyrics, "My religion doesn't hate. It will never turn you away. It always understands." So, I can relate to the lyrics really well.