Actor-comedian Aziz Ansari (“Master of None,” “Parks and Recreation”) is a self-described “son of Muslim immigrants” and in this recent op-ed for the New York Times, writes about the aftermath of the Orlando attacks and having to tell his parents not to go to their mosque for fear of their own safety. Among Aziz’s many vital points, he makes this compelling one —
“There are approximately 3.3 million Muslim Americans. After the attack in Orlando, The Times reported that the F.B.I. is investigating 1,000 potential “homegrown violent extremists,” a majority of whom are most likely connected in some way to the Islamic State. If everyone on that list is Muslim American, that is 0.03 percent of the Muslim American population. If you round that number, it is 0 percent. The overwhelming number of Muslim Americans have as much in common with that monster in Orlando as any white person has with any of the white terrorists who shoot up movie theaters or schools or abortion clinics.
I asked a young friend of mine, a woman in her 20s of Muslim heritage, how she had been feeling after the attack. ‘I just feel really bad, like people think I have more in common with that idiot psychopath than I do the innocent people being killed,’ she said. “I’m really sick of having to explain that I’m not a terrorist every time the shooter is brown.”
A must read!
