With the recent upsurge of women’s rights, #BlackLivesMatter, and many other anti-discrimination campaigns, the world is often seen at its most progressive. I mean, with Women being able to vote, and the removal of the “N Word” from everyday language, how could the world not be seen as progressive?

However, as much progress as we’ve made in modern society, we are still lightyears away from a perfectly tolerant world.

One of the major problems holding us back from achieving this progressive society is the current embedded Islamaphobia in everyday life.

Islamaphobia is one of the major themes we’ve been discussing in our ASTU class, with our recent reading of the novel Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. The novel deals with the death of a father after he’s killed in the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11th of 2001.

Islamaphobia is more than hating Muslims, but it’s the fear that every person possesses when a brown person walks on the plane, or in a building. It’s the looks that every man in a turban receives no matter where he is, simply for the fact that he’s wearing a turban. It’s Donald Trump demanding that every Muslim in the world apologize for 9/11, ignorant of the fact that it was the work of an extremist group and not the entire religion.

Islamaphobia is so deeply embedded in society that it often doesn’t feel wrong. When a woman in a burka is almost always stopped for “Randomly Selected Screening” at airports, then it’s the product of Islamaphobia.

Islamaphobia is present in Stephen Harper’s Bill C51. It’s present at every coffee joint, movie theater, shopping mall and amusement park. Islamaphobia was present when my cousin wasn’t allowed to do his job because some old man thought he saw a bomb in his back pocket and very loudly asked my cousin to leave his workplace and “go back to his country”. Islamaphobia was present when that old man refused to believe that my cousin was born in Canada because “Canada has and always will be a white country first and foremost, no matter how many Syrian refugees Justin fucking Trudeau lets in”.

To conclude, the world has come a long way since signs separated “coloured bathrooms” from regular bathrooms, however it’s not as tolerant as people make it seem. As much progress as we’ve made in recent times, there is still a long way to go, and Islamaphobia is only example of many of the harsh discriminations against minorities in the present world.