I am heartbroken over these senseless deaths, the same way everyone else is. But I want to take this moment to remind everyone:
Terrorism and hate crimes, they have two goals:
-to inspire fear in the targeted group
-to inspire hatred towards the ethnic group that the terrorists come from
It’s okay to be afraid, that’s a natural reaction and no one will judge you for it.
BUT DO NOT ALLOW THIS OR ANY OTHER ACT OF TERRORISM OR HATE TO GROW HATRED IN YOUR HEARTS.
That’s what the terrorists want. They saw what happened to this country after 9/11, a great wave of hatred for Muslims swept this country, and look what happened: not only did we embroil ourselves in two wars in the Middle East in response, but our hatred and actions inspired thousands upon thousands of new terrorists and radicalized thousands upon thousands of Muslims. Our hatred also is responsible not only for countless acts of war and hate crimes towards innocent Muslims, but also for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more, peaceful, civilian Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
DO NOT FORGET. As a people, as an ethnic group, Muslims are victims of terrorism, too, and twice over; they have and continue to experience terrorism directly on their soil, but they also experience terrorism indirectly from the hatred directed towards them because of the actions of a few within their midst, and the violence and hate crimes that hatred spawns in turn.
DO NOT PERPETUATE THE CYCLE OF HATRED. BREAK THE CYCLE.
