Growing up in a diverse city, the culture around me has always been different. Every person that I see always has a different type of belief than me. I’m a 17 year old Muslim student who lives in Southeast Texas. My father is from the Middle East, and my mother is from Western Europe. My parents migrated as refugees from Croatia to Houston in 1995 due to the ongoing war in Yugoslavia. After they’ve migrated they’ve lived in peace here ever since. However that has changed a lot since 9/11, one of the biggest terrorist attacks in history to ever happen in the United States.
Now everyone who originates from the Middle East has been looked at as an abomination, and how we’re judged for everything that we believe in. It just happens to be that I was born in the time of all of this monstrosity. When I was a little kid, I had many foreign friends. All who originated from around the world, South-America, Africa, Jamaica, Europe, and Asia. Me being the only one from the Middle-East, and yet I felt as if I was different from all of them. The reason I say this is because of all of the attraction the media is focusing on to the Middle East.
There are kids that grow up watching television, and they see what the media puts out there. They begin to have a mindset of the people in the Middle East. Now Middle East is far more different than any other foreign country just because of 9/11. Everybody who is from the Middle East is unfairly considered a terrorist area. Even after 14 years we still get hated by other people. I say for everyone Middle east person, that I wish that we all had the same beliefs, and we can all trust one another. Not everyone from the Middle East is a bad person, a lot of them are actually very peaceful human beings.
Even the religion is being made fun of because of the terrorism that is placed over there. There’s people who say islam is the religion of hatred, when it really means the religion of peace Even though Islam as a religion was being discriminated, I was never really a religious type of person. I just tended to be an easy going person who wanted to just enjoy life. I still get bullied and teased about being Muslim. I never really cared about the others people’s comments, because it never really offended me. Everyone who is christian always says that they had the right religion, and say my religion is wrong.
I’ve never really cared about that, I don’t care if your religion is better than mine. Everyone has their own belief and it should be respected. Let me believe what I want to believe in, and you can believe in what you want to believe. You know why I say that? Because we live in the United States, we have the right to believe in what we want to believe in. That’s why I as a person never told another person that their belief is wrong, and that they’re on a pathway to hell. You believe in Jesus as God’s son, and I respect that. Why can’t you respect the decisions I tend to make?
Is it because i’m a Muslim? I begin to think that the media is the one creating an image for us, and how we really are. I’m not going to say that all people discriminate us cause some people actually believe we’re good. I admire those people a lot as well. Even some powerful ople in the country don’t think of us as a waste of space, but people who can actually make a difference. President Barack Obama once said, “We will never be at war with Islam, we’re fighting terrorists who distort Islam and whose victims are mostly Muslims.
This was an amazing statement, because it made me actually belief that we are apart of something. Like | am apart of society, and that I am not any different from anyone else. He made people who have been discriminated all the time, as if they are one of them. Those people who can finally say, “I am proud to be an American. ” All of that has changed with just one simple line. I once felt that I was just a person who had no meaning to his life, but now I feel like I actually make a difference in today’s world.
Sadly however, there are still some people who still feel a type of hatred towards the people of the Middle East. I’m happy with the way that my life is right now. I have plenty of friends around me that I spend time with every night who don’t discriminate me. I still believe that one day everyone will have the same belief, not religious wise, but the way that we treat each other. I struggled a hard conflict in my life over the last 17 years, and I can almost see the end of the tunnel of the point where it is about to finish.