A poll came out this week showing more than half of Canadians believe Muslims to be untrustworthy, scoring far worse than any other group.
What is up with that, Canada? We are supposed to be a melting pot. A land of immigration, proud of our multicultural heritage, yet it seems we’ve let Islamophobia take over the majority?
This doesn’t surprise me. I’m saddened, but not really shocked. I’ve seen seen this blatant ignorance firsthand, from people I know, people who are supposedly free thinking and rational, espousing all kinds of fear based vitriol directed towards Muslims, like they’ve been indoctrinated by propaganda machines trying to divide humanity and make us fight amongst ourselves. They should know better.
Don’t you know its foolish to generalize an entire group based the actions of the fringe minority. Just look at the to which you yourself belong to, maybe Catholic, Christian, or Atheist. You know for a fact that people who share the very same label, the same cultural identifier ,cover a wide range of beliefs, practices and traditions.
You don’t all adhere to the exact same strict dogma, and the same is true for Muslims. For the vast majority, Muslims everywhere in the world are very similar to you and me, and only want to raise their families in peace and security.
Instead of marginalizing and distrusting people of the Muslim faith, or any other faith or culture, we’d do much better to embrace a more expansive personal identity, to include humans – no matter where they come from or what label they adopt – as part of your own extended family.
The more we all do this, the stronger we will all be to fight extremism wherever it lies, and together we can make our world a better place.
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