Right now, America is going through an alarming time, a time when we are being attacked by an invisible enemy. This enemy is everywhere, undetected, and is gaining more force each day. It is dividing the American people, causing us to distrust one another. This enemy is not restricted to one religion, class, race, government or organization, it knows no boundaries and borders. If this enemy is not stopped, it will be capable of putting thousands, even millions of lives in danger. It will spark a mass-ethnic violence as horrific as the Holocaust in America. This enemy is a terrorist, a murderer, a heckler all in one, and it is no one else but the American people itself.

In the wake of horrific acts of violence in San Bernardino and Orlando, people were quick to put the blame on America’s Muslims. I mean, why not? 9/11 was perpetrated by terrorists who affiliated themselves with Islam; same story for the attacks in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and Orlando. After these attacks, mosques and Muslims across America were under the threats of ethnic profiling and discriminatory crimes; just between November 15th to December 22nd of last year, in a mere span of a month, there were 38 instances of anti-Islamic hate crimes. Mosques were vandalized and in some extreme cases, arsoned; businesses owned by Mosques were vandalized as well. People were heckled and assaulted in the streets just because they were Muslim, and the internet quickly filled with hateful comments towards American Muslims.

Which brings us to Kristallnacht, the night of the broken glass, a series coordinated acts of violence against Jewish communities in the Nazi Reich in 1938 after a 17 year-old Jewish teenager assassinated a German diplomat in Paris. Synagogues were burned down, businesses were vandalized and those of Jewish faith were harassed and incarcerated just because of their faith. Frighteningly, the similarity between this incident in the Nazi Reich and modern-day America is uncanny; change the setting to modern day United States, replace Judaism with Islam and voilà. The latest hate crimes against Muslims in America is identical to Kristallnacht, just on a smaller scale, and since it’s in a smaller scale, some might think comparing the two is a dramatic exaggeration. But all wildfires start from a timber, all wars start from a single gunshot, and Kristallnacht was the trigger that started the horror that was the Holocaust. As frightening as it may seem, America’s current antipathy towards Muslim-Americans could be the beginning of a much bigger disaster.

However, that is not where the similarity between Nazi Germany and America right now ends. Back when he was in the running, former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz proposed full police surveillance of Muslim-American communities, just like the Nazis did with the Jewish communities prior to the Holocaust. Donald Trump, the current presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, proposed “a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” just like the Nazis limited movement of Jews. These candidates used fear-driven religious profiling as their ammunition just like Hitler did in order to absorb power in the 1930’s, which is absolutely abhorrent, frightening and disgusting.

Without us knowing, we are driving ourselves down the path that Germany went down in 1939. We are profiling a race from extremely isolated acts of violence. Out of 141 mass shootings in America in the year 2016, only three were perpetrated by Muslims according to the Washington Post. However, that is enough for us to start calling another group of Americans “terrorists”, “killers” or “people we can’t trust” just because these abhorrent murderers claimed they were Muslims. Without knowing much about Islam, we are blaming the loss of dozens of lives to Muslims, just like the Germans blamed the Jews for their disastrous economic downfall after World War 1. We have started demonizing an entire religion because some politicians said all Muslims “have the same thought process” as the disgusting terrorists, so what’s the big difference that separates us from 1930’s German Reich?

We, as Americans, have to focus on the real causes of these attacks: ISIS and other radical “Muslim” organizations whose practices are complete opposite of Islam’s teachings and loose and deeply flawed gun control laws of America. We also have to stop the religious profiling of Muslims and learn that actions of few twisted murderers who claim to be Muslim does not define all of Islam just like how one KKK member does not describe all Christians. If America does not learn how to unite in the wake of acts of violence disguised as a religious act and stop the racial profiling of Muslims in America quickly, we might find ourselves in another nightmare like the Holocaust or the ethnic cleansing right here on the American soil.