As a Muslim, I am tired of condemning terrorist attacks being carried out by inherently violent people who hijack my religion. I am tired of condemning these attacks to people who are calm and apathetic when Muslims are killed by radicalized terrorists.
Above it all, I am tired of having to repeatedly say that all Muslims are not terrorists. It is time we silence this Islamophobia with facts. My next point will prove once and for all that Muslims are not terrorists
If all Muslims are terrorists, then all Muslims are peacemakers. The same statistical assumptions being used to falsely portray Muslims as violent people can be used more accurately to portray Muslims as peaceful people. If all Muslims are terrorists because a single digit percentage of terrorists happen to be Muslim, then all Muslims are peacemakers because five out of the previous 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners (42%) have been Muslims.
When a drunk driver causes a car accident, we never blame the car manufacturer for the violent actions of that driver. This is because we understand that we cannot blame an entire car company that produces millions of safe vehicles just because one of their cars was hijacked by a reckless person who used it to cause harm. So what right do we have to blame an entire religion of over 1.6 billion peaceful people because of the actions of a few?
These terrorist do not belong to any religion. They are not Muslims nor Hindus, they are not Christians nor Sikhs, they are not Buddhists nor Jains, their only religion is terrorism. I plead to you all to consider the facts mentioned here the next time you see a news headline about Muslims and terrorism. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” We cannot allow the disparity in media coverage to blind us from the facts and turn us into hateful people, we are smarter than that.