November 13th, Paris

Yesterday I found out about a terrible attack that happened in Paris. Millions of people around the world inmediately stepped forward to show their solidarity with France. It was everything that news programmes talked about the whole day. And although I personally feel very sad about it too, I also believe that the way this has been portrayed in the media is very unfair.

The sad truth is that things like these happen everyday in places like Syria and Iraq. However, they barely discuss it on TV and when they do it's only a small headline in a big summary of world news. It seems like we only care about the victims when they come from a rich white European country. On Friday there were also terrorist attacks in Beirut, Libanon and earthquakes in both Mexico and Japan, but they probably didn't get more than two minutes in television.

A negative effect of this event is the reappereance of islamophobia and racism. I heard the expression of "islamic terrorism" far too many times yesterday. It seems like religion is only related to terrorism when it comes to ISIS. Whenever a white American boy walks into school and starts shooting people there is no talk of religion, and if he happens to be christian we just assume that it has nothing to do with the act itself.

Terrorism has no religion and terrorists don't represent islam, they just choose to believe what they have to in order to spread horror. Implying that all muslims sympathize with ISIS or Al-Qaeda is the same as saying that all Germans are nazi or that all christians are part of Ku Klux Klan: it is an unfair generalization.

Nowadays more than ever we must also show solidarity with muslims all over the world who have to live their lives everyday facing the prejudice caused by a few who find pleasure in seeing others suffer, as well as those in Paris who were directly affected by the massacre and are still afraid. They are all victims.

Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all humankind - Quran 5:32