Thank you for your front page article ‘This is not about Islam’ in the last issue of Peace News.
As an Asian living in the UK, I experience racism every day in one form or another. It’s something that gives you a thick skin but also has made me wary of trusting people.
Most young Asian people are subjected to a similar experience, but those that are the ‘black sheep’ of their communities find it more difficult as they are unable to approach peers to talk and contextualise their experiences.
Terrorism in the name of Islam has exacerbated the situation. Now, being a brown person means that you might be a terrorist or have sympathies for them. Hashtags like #NotInMyName may be helpful to populations of western countries to show people we are not all the same, but after recent terrorist attacks in Belgium and France that were carried out by European nationals, action is needed to change the way Asian people are treated in Europe.
Stop alienating us, we are also the victims just like you. Let’s work together to change the playing field by supporting the people within our society that are targeted by these terrorists and their ideologies and thus starving them of the martyrs that they so heavily rely on.