Yesterday, my mom was telling me about a conversation she had with an old friend of hers from Georgia. It started out pretty normal; they exchanged stories about what they'd been up to, they discussed how horrible the weather had been for everyone this winter, and they talked about, you guessed it, Beyonce and her twins.

And then the conversation took a different turn. Somehow, the subject of Trump was brought up, and my mom was expecting to lament and complain with her old friend about how horribly wrong our country has gone, how far we've fallen in only a few weeks. Instead, her friend extolled Trump's virtues, praising his Muslim ban and explaining to my mom how he really has been making America great again, just like he promised.

My mom told me she was too stunned at first to speak, and so let her friend rattle on about Trump. But at some point, my mom interrupted her, and with a hint of incredulity in her voice, told her friend: "You know, his Muslim ban means my family and I can no longer leave the country? My parents' visa application, that has been pending for a decade, has been postponed indefinitely? Trump thinks my family and I are less than human, you know this, right?" to which her friend replied: "Oh, no dear, I didn't mean your family; you guys are great! I meant all the other Muslims out there are the dangerous one!"

And honestly? This is so endemic of what our culture has become today. "No, you're the good kind of Muslim because I know you and you've never blown up a building! It's all the scary Muslims with hijabs and foreign accents out there that scare me! We need to keep them out!"

I'm not going to make this article an investigation into all the fallacious and incorrect things Trump and his Axis of Evil cabinet members have been putting out the past few days; there's enough of those fact-checking blogs going around. I merely want to suggest the idea to all my Republican friends, all my conservative friends and old acquaintances from around the U.S. who still believe in Trump, who believe all Muslims are bad, who think new is scary, to sit back and think for a second. Think of the conversation my mom had with her friend. Her friend, who has known my mother for countless years, who has been to our house and who came to my sweet sixteen and sends birthday cards every year. Her friend, who thinks her Muslim friend is ok, but every other Muslim out there must be bad because the government told her so.

If you find yourself thinking all Muslims are dangerous, think of my family, who you have all known in some capacity. My entire family came from Iran, one of Trump's banned countries. They were all born Muslims, and there's a Koran in our living room. Think of how often you were in my home, or you went to to lunch with me or came to a party hosted by my parents. Think about how I made you laugh once, or how my mom baked cookies and I brought them in to share. Remember how you let me babysit your children, remember how you invited my family into your homes and thought nothing of it.

So remember all of those things about my family, and then think about that statement again: "all Muslims are bad." Think about how ridiculous it sounds. Go on.