Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Paris was attacked by ISIS affiliated terrorists and that a bunch of other attacks followed the first one in Paris. These events have launched a bunch of different reactions from different political and social groups around the world. The French government has declared a state of emergency for the next three months and the French President wants to take action against ISIS.
The main debate in the United States is whether or not to accept Syrian refugees into the United States and, if the answer is yes, how many to accept over what span of time. President Obama said that he wants to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States, but more than half of the governors are refusing (with no legal standing) to allow Syrian refugees in their state. I would understand the viewpoint of these governors if they were concerned with overcrowding or something of the sort, but instead these governors are more concerned that some of the refugees could actually be terrorists. And they do have some justification in this fear: some of the terrorists in the Paris attacks were posing as refugees. I cannot, however, condone the prejudices on which these governors are acting.
The assumption that "all Muslims are terrorists" has existed in America since 9/11 and has only increased in intensity after the Paris attacks. People are making assumptions about a large group of people based on the actions of a small extremist faction which the larger group condemns for their irreligious actions. Over a year ago, a group of Muslim scholars wrote a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, condemning his actions and pointing out that the ideals on which his group operates are not in accordance with Islamic law, thereby trying to disassociate the larger group from these extremists. Over 23 percent of the world population (1.6 billion people) are Muslim. ISIS represents less than 1 percent of all people who identify as Muslim:
Islamaphobia is a plague in the United States and across the globe. It is based on misconceptions and fears of terror. While some people think that they are completely justified in this bigotry, I would like to point out that the KKK also thought their bigotry was justified. Bigoted discrimination, by definition, can never be justified when it leads to violence against innocent people. A woman in Indiana was attacked just for being Muslim. A Syrian family was refused entrance into Indiana (but was thankfully welcomed in Connecticut) even though the family was promised a new home there.
I only hope that others can learn lessons other than fear and hate from the recent terror attacks. Despite their suffering and pain, France is still determined to accept 30,000 new refugees over the next two years. Even though they suffered so much, the people of France still want to help these innocent refugees, displaced from their homes by violence that has affected them and their communities far more than it has impacted Western countries. The people of Paris even showed their forgiveness when a Muslim man blindfolded himself and positioned himself in the middle of a busy square, asking for hugs:
I hope that we can all learn one important lesson from the events of the past few weeks: despite the actions of a few individuals, not all Muslims are terrorist and all Muslims need to be treated with the respect and dignity of anyone else.
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