The United States is undoubtedly facing a most crucial time in its history, and the truth is that the mis-education of our society plays a fundamental role in our social crisis. To be more specific, we all know that after the 9/11 attacks, our country has entered a stage of paranoia and intolerance. The United States has unfairly labeled people with Middle Eastern and Arab backgrounds as their lethal enemies, and possible threats to our national security.
Keeping our people safe has become an obsession to our government, but the measures that are being reinforced have become biased, radical, and unconstitutional. After reading the article American Muslims' Ongoing Civil Rights Fight by Al Jazeera, I came to the realization that American society is filled with ignorance regarding race and culture. Oftentimes we get these two terms confused, but the truth is that between these two terms relies a big difference.
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Race mainly refers to a person's physical appearance, such as bone structure, skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity refers to cultural factors including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language. As a result of the constant misinterpretation of these two terms, there have been a lot of incidents in which innocent people have been wrongly hurt by the hands of people who are blinded by hate and racism. One of the many brutal incidents recently occurred was the one in Canada.
A young white man opened fire at a mosque in which he wrongly thought that followers of the Islam faith was conducting their payers. This act of hate left a lot of people wounded, but the worst case was that the people who were attacked were in fact Sikhs. Sadly, this is not the first case of racial violence, and I am most certain that it won’t be the last. This article primarily drives our attention on the importance of educating our society, as well as spreading tolerance and acceptance to our communities.
We cannot allow fear, ignorance, and hate dominate and control the way we interact with each other. Regardless of our different faiths and backgrounds, we must learn to respect each other, and learn from each other; we cannot forget that we live in a country that is made by immigrants.
To conclude, I must say that the article speaks on a subject that is now becoming more and more common in our society, and sadly is ravaging the country at high speed. As the article stated, the only way to stop the hate crimes against the Muslim communities is if we educate our people and promote peace and tolerance within our own social circle.
