Hope after Paris

By: Isa MilefchikIn the wake of the attacks inflicted upon the hundreds of innocent civilians in Paris, I have once again found myself reflecting on my identity and experience coming from a Muslim family. And after some time spent self-analyzing, I find myself lucky to be able to say I have never felt oppressed because of my ethnicity. Maybe it’s because of my relatively rare genetic heritage of being half-white, half-Persian. Maybe such a mix is too new and unknown to have garnered any prefixed images in people’s minds to scrutinize over yet. But as of now, I haven’t felt any oppression at all for being of Muslim origin. As far as I’m aware, I’ve never been denied certain privileges that others have, never been hated or attacked by xenophobes, and never been put in the same category as those in the ISIL or in al-Qaeda. I attribute this almost completely to my physical and online environment. I go to high school in Santa Monica, California. I don’t deal with the hatred and blame that Muslims elsewhere do for the various Islamic attacks and terrorist events that happen around the world. Any time such an event occurs, I can be sure to log on to Facebook and see statuses demanding that no one discriminate against Muslims for what has happened. The media we have billed in past years as Islamophobic is changing, and I can see the formation of a more progressive majority in news channels, Facebook pages and public opinions rapidly building.Of course, I’m not in the adult, independent world yet. I have never felt hatred because of my ethnicity, but I know my mother has. I’ve heard of several instances when patients have asked for a different woman than my mom for their medical assistance. I have heard of stories in which she is hatefully described as “the Arab.” But I don’t see even these stories as alarming or threatening. The patients my mom treats are old and sometimes stuck in mindsets that are outdated and almost definitely not exhibited by their children. Their era has passed and they don't present a sufficient threat to my future.Even the more immediate and topical threats I find online do not worry me substantially. Every now and then, I may break through my online filter bubble and stumble across an article that perpetuates Islamophobia and Middle Eastern scrutiny. Popular culprits of this are articles with titles such as “Importing ISIS: See Where Obama Is Resettling Syrian ‘Refugees’ In The United States,” a headline that appeared in the largely unknown and comically named conservative blog, “The Weasel Zippers” on Nov. 14. This current trend amongst fear mongering Islamophobes insinuates that the Syrian war victims brought into our country are terrorists infiltrating our public safety. But such opinions do not have nearly the same weight that we find in progressive media. It is common to find the same magnitude of unqualified hatred in other obscure online news sources like this one, but they never make half the impact on public opinion as major progressive media outlets such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) or the modern day media giant that Buzzfeed has become. All of these mentioned have participated in the attempt of extinguishment of Islamophobic hatred in the United States. All of them represent the fierce and growing opposition to the less accepting news sources that prove problematic for Muslims in America.But I would like to make it exceedingly clear that I am not the type to claim a comprehensive experience in Muslim alienation. I’m aware of the dangers of Islamophobia exploitation. I laugh at stories like Ahmed Mohamed’s, the 14-year-old Middle Eastern boy in Texas who repackaged his alarm clock into his pencil case, causing his teacher to call the police and have him arrested when it began beeping in class. I find the teacher’s decision understandable when images online show that the pencil case and alarm clock concoction objectively appears to be a typical James Bond or Hollywood action movie briefcase bomb. I won’t take a story like that and run with it, screaming, “Here it is! Proof of my suffering! Proof of the discrimination against my culture!” And though I personally don’t find Ahmed’s story to be representative of Muslim discrimination in America, there are plenty out there that do. Kids who’ve discovered my background sometimes poke fun at me, making 9/11 references or, at the worst, calling me “ISIS” because of my name’s phonetic and visual resemblance. I am not saying that these things are good or harmless, but I do think they are forgivable.I am deeply saddened by the violence around the world that has been provoked by those who claim to follow the Islamic faith, but I am also optimistic. I don’t see the Paris attacks as a step backwards in the progress Muslims have made in establishing a peaceful identity. With as much force as an event like this seems to have in shining a negative light on Muslims, a stronger opposing force seems to always combat such a threat. Perhaps I’m in a bubble and am blind to the scope of hatred that boils over with each event of Muslim violence, but the past few days have made me feel an overwhelming support for Muslims around the world. I’ve seen it in the media, on Facebook, and in conversations amongst those around me. Every destructive event such as this opens up an opportunity for positive reconstruction, and as long as we use such an opportunity effectively, the world will continue to become more accepting each generation.