Last night while eating dinner my 9-year-old niece just blurts out, "Why do people hate Muslims?" Obviously taken aback, I wanted to know why she thought that. She said she overheard the parents of some kids at the park talking about how all Muslims are terrorists and they should all be deported from this country or killed. This visit to the park was last week so she's been sitting with this for awhile. Then it sent me frantically thinking about how to best handle such a question.
I had a conversation just last week with a family member about religion in America, specifically about Muslims. Where one of my aunts lives, there was a big deal about a workplace refusing to let its Muslim workers take a break at sundown for Ramadan. In an article I read online about the dispute, I could not believe how many comments there were from people saying that the Muslim workers had to "be flexible" and should maybe "consider taking a pay cut to work at a job that provides adequate hours for them to practice their religion". There were very few comments about being tolerant of other faiths. In fact, there were a ton of comments about how we needed to make this country the "Christian nation it once was". I must have missed that chapter of American history because as long as we've been a nation, there have been a number of diverse races and religions.
Telling Muslims that they can't have a short break to do something their religion requires is like telling a Catholic they can't go to church on Ash Wednesday or saying they have to wipe the ashes off their forehead before they come into work. It's like asking a Jewish person to eat during a full fasting holiday. Nobody should have to hide their religion, no matter what it is. Obviously, Christians make up the majority of people in this country but that does not mean that everyone else should follow. The freedoms we have in America are the reason people want to come to this country and one of those freedoms is freedom of religion. I can't believe how intolerant a nation we actually seem to be sometimes.
Islam is really, when you simplify it, similar to Christianity in this way - there's a divide amongst Muslims and extremists and there is a divide amongst Evangelicals and Christians. The Koran is meant to be interpreted by each person as they see fit. So is the Bible. Muslim extremists interpret the message to be violence and war to attain what they want. The majority of Muslims practice peacefully. Further, Catholics, Christians and Muslims all believe in God. Yes, the same God, just different variations. But I guess it's the littlest things that people use to separate themselves from each other. I don't have a dog in this fight so I feel like I can see from a sort of outside view, in a way.
And so I spent over an hour explaining to this child why she heard the things she did on the playground. Explaining to her that you don't discriminate against someone because of the color of their skin or their beliefs. You may not agree with their beliefs, but you should respect everybody equally. Fortunately, she's growing up in an extremely tolerant family and around a diverse group of people so the message was easy to get across. I just still can't believe she heard such a thing on the playground. It's like kids can't even be kids anymore and that's sad.
