Why do people hate Muslims? What has happened in the past few years that's made people post things like this?
Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the prevalence of Islamophobia, especially on Facebook, has astounded me.
The amount of people who take issue with Muslims may or may not be increasing, but the brash and hateful sentiments have become more and more prevalent. Comments like the one featured above are, of course, much more extreme than the average statement, but it's not just in writing.
People like Donald Trump have insinuated that we need to be creating databases, lists and tracking methods and implementing them with the purpose of tracking and preventing terrorism here in the United States.
Here's the (hopefully obvious) problem with that:
The biggest thing is the fact that his disciples (DON-ciples?) hang onto his every word. During a "The Daily Show" focus group consisting of only prospective Trump voters, all six participants insisted they would still vote for Trump if he implemented a national registry for Muslims. During the same period of questions, two of the six indicated they would still vote for him if he implemented a national registry for Jews. Look, I know your racist uncle whines about how some Democrat somewhere is literally Hitler, but can we at least agree that Trump's proposal of a national registry of everyone belonging to a singular religion is, at the bare minimum...Hitler-y? Hitler-esque? Hitler-adjacent?
The other huge issue with this sentiment is that domestic terrorism (mass shootings) is a crime majorly committed by white men. According to Statista, 64 percent of these shootings were committed by white men, 16 percent were committed by black men, and nine percent by Asians. Huffington Post reported mid-2015 that of the 207 reported mass shootings that occurred in that year, exactly one was committed by a Muslim.
So when you hear your racist uncle spouting off something like "Trump is going to stop the Muslims from ruining our country" in between his Keystone beer vomit-burps, remind him that he's much more likely to do something terrible than the average Muslim-American is.
