I woke up this morning angry. Angry that this happened. And angry at the reaction from many of my friends and family. I usually try to stay quiet on issues such as this because I live in circumstances where expressing a differing "opinion" from those around me results in being a labeled a "crazy liberal looney" or being accused of "attacking" those with a differing opinion, rather than just offering a different point of view (which is 99.9% of the time the reality of the situation). But I have been moved past fear of ostracization during this time of tragedy and wish to present you all with a quick history lesson.
On December 7, 1941 tragedy struck the United States Naval base on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese forces violently attacked our nation seemingly unprovoked and this made us understandably very angry.
Our nations reaction do these attacks however, would live on as a glaring black spot on our history.
Japanese internment camp after the Pearl Harbor attacks
The American people were quick to generalize and as a nation we came to the conclusion that our Japanese enemies represented all people of Japanese decent. Thus resulting in the internment of all American citizens of Japanese decent.
actor George Takei shares his experience in a Japanese Internment camp
And now I see friends and family suggesting we do the same, or worse, to our Muslim neighbors. We yell, "The Muslims did this! The Muslims must pay!". The Muslims did not do this, a terrorist extremist group called "ISIS" did.
If the anti-Muslim sentiment wasn't bad enough during this time of tragedy, the world is also in the midst of a massive Syrian refugee crisis. Being confused about the crisis when it first hit the media I did some research into the situation and found these helpful video's that really sum up the situation well that I'd like to share with you all now.
I've seen many people on my facebook feed claiming that we absolutely cannot let these refugees into our country now! They are Muslims! They are terrorists!
Some quick research taken from mostly unbiased sources can prove that this is simply not the case. The refugees involved in the crisis are not even all Muslim, many our Hindu, or Christian. And the purpose of their fleeing is not to bring the same terror of their home country they are trying to escape to us, if you think about that for more than a second you realize that conclusion simply doesn't make any sense.
Muslims are not synonymous with ISIS anymore than Christians are synonymous with the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK.
The enemy here is not Muslims, people of Muslim decent or the refugee's from Syria.
The enemy here is ISIS.
And now more than ever we must unite the world against their evil ways.
Thank you for your time.
-Ellen
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