“Why let ISIS speak for 1.8 billion Muslims when you don’t allow the KKK to speak for all Christians?”

I picked a coffee shop in town and I put a small ad in the local paper. I named it Meet A Muslim and I put some questions there, so people could get a feel of what they could ask me. I also wrote that nothing was off the table. People could come in and ask any question they might have. On the assigned date and time, I thought maybe nobody would come, so I took my laptop just in case. I went to the coffee shop about 10 minutes early, and there were already 20 people sitting there. By the time I started, there were over a hundred people. It gave me a very warm feeling people are eager to learn about my faith and about me as a Muslim woman. I’ve been doing these events since then. It's a mission I've taken on to educate my fellow Americans about who I am.

There was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about my work and I had an event in Fremont. A gentleman was there and he had the newspaper in his hand. He said he wanted to ask me questions and started showing me the newspaper article of my story, and pretty much the whole article was highlighted. I asked him to hold his thoughts and to ask me once everybody is here so more people could benefit.

At that event, there was this woman who came and she completely hijacked the event. She wouldn’t allow anybody to talk. And I constantly respectfully tried to interject and get to somebody else but it was very difficult. So the gentleman just rushed out of the room. I ran after him and stopped him. He was so mad at me. He said I made sure that he did not get to ask any questions.

So I sat down with him for 30 minutes one-on-one and I answered every question. At the end, he told me that he lived with his dad, and his dad was completely against Muslims. He said he was also from the same camp and he didn't even want to come. But because he saw the story in the papers he decided to just come. When he left, he shook my hand and he was so thankful to me that I helped him understand, and he said he was going to tell his dad all these things. The fact that somebody left with a better understanding is so heartwarming. Why let ISIS speak for 1.8 billion Muslims when you don't allow the KKK to speak for all Christians?