The amount of hate I’ve been seeing on my social media feeds lately, especially Facebook, has been sickening. It’s exhausting. In a world that’s already full of so much hate, so much sadness, and so much pain, it is up to us to be loving and to love each other in an attempt to try and provide something good in such an unforgiving world.
I see lots of hate towards different groups of people on my Facebook feed, and after last week's Paris attacks, especially towards Muslims. America’s islamophobia has been problematic ever since 9/11 because some people are still incapable of distinguishing a small group from the whole. Muslims were not responsible for 9/11; a select few were. Muslims were not responsible for the Boston bombings; a select few were. Muslims were not responsible for the Paris attacks; a select few were. Overgeneralizing and putting everyone into a single group and stereotype is not realistic. If we’re using that logic, then that would also make all Christians terrorists because the KKK is a Christian terrorist group. Every group has its extremists, but those extremists do are not representative of the whole group.
Like, how offensive is this? I have seen several people share this recently. Muslims as a whole were not responsible for this. You should not be disregarding someone’s feelings because of their religion. You could take a picture of the KKK and put the same caption on it, but just replace the world “Muslims” with the word “Christians.” That would make people lose their minds. No one wants to think that white Americans have a past of doing anything wrong. But we all do. Every organized group has it’s problematic members.
It’s especially frustrating when the same people who are sharing all of these islamophobic posts on social media are the same people who were quick to jump at people yelling “All Lives Matter!” trying to undermine the “Black Lives Matter” movement. So, all lives matter until they’re Muslim, then? That’s how it appears to be.
Don’t get me wrong, what the Islamic extremists are doing is horrible and they need to be stopped, but those extremists do not represent Islam as a whole, and it is unfair that the name of Islam is being tainted by the extremists. Not all Muslims are terrorists, just like not all Christians are terrorists, not all black people are thugs, not all feminists are feminazis, and the same goes with every other offensive stereotype out there.
Please just think before you speak. In a world that’s hurting as badly as it is right now, we need to be spreading love, not hate. We need to be loving each other, it’s the one of the only things we have left. Everything is politics now, everyone has divided into a left and a right, but we’re all still human and need to try and spread as much love as we can. Love is the only thing stronger than hate.
