[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The escalating prejudice against the Muslim community in America may have reached a peak of absurdity on Feb. 10 when three University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students were shot by their white neighbor in a dispute over a parking spot. The three students, Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha, were all admirable, driven scholars at UNC-Chapel Hill. The man who has been charged with their murders is 46-year-old Craig Stevens Hicks. Some involved in the case have stated the incident was not racially motivated, but an isolated incident. Though it may not be certain if Hicks shot the three students because of their religious beliefs, it is certain the current treatment of Islam citizens in the United States is completely unconstitutional. There is a constant surge of lies from the mainstream media surrounding the Muslim religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all Muslims are Arab. Not all Muslims hate the U.S.

FEATURE OPINION: GET MOVING AND REAP THE BENEFITS

Islam is the second-largest religion in the entire world, according to Pew Research Center. About 1.6 billion people in this world are Muslim. If there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, does that mean a quarter of the world’s population are terrorists? No. Absolutely not. In fact, in the European Union, less than two percent of all terrorist attacks are religiously motivated, according to ThinkProgress.org. This may seem especially surprising because of all the media attention that followed the homicides at Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine. When reports of the shooting were broadcast, the news highly emphasized that Islamic radicals carried out the murders. But that is how the government convinces the U.S. population to support its anti-Muslim agenda — through media manipulation.

In 2013, there were 152 terrorist attacks in the European Union, according to The Daily Beast. Two of those attacks were religiously motivated, and that reference to “religion” does not necessarily mean Islam. There are terrorist groups associated with Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism as well. In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, who has been described as a fundamentalist Christian, annihilated more than 70 people in Norway in order to “save” the country from a Muslim takeover. This incident was not broadcast and analyzed on every news station for weeks on end because nobody thinks of a Christian terrorist as a serious threat. The news and the government tell us that only Muslim terrorists are real and only Muslim terrorists are dangerous.

After 9/11, the U.S. government attempted to counter terrorism by any means possible. One of those means came in the form of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is pretty much a piece of legislation that bypasses everything written in the Bill of Rights. Under the Patriot Act, it is legal for American citizens to be randomly searched without any probable cause, incarcerated indefinitely without a trial and monitored in their religious and political institutions even if there is no criminal activity suspected. These actions foster the belief that all people who are Muslim are Arab because the implementation of the Patriot Act is often based on physical appearance. We have adopted the term Arab to describe anyone with a dark complexion who is of Middle Eastern descent and part of the Islamic religion. This is not only inaccurate, but also offensive. The word Arab is meant to describe people who speak Arabic, and that includes only 20 percent of Muslims, according to EncounteringIslam.com. Many people who are Arab actually follow the Christian religion, and assuming that they are Islam based on their physical appearance is an erroneous stereotype.

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