Muslims Are Terrorists

“I'm not saying all Muslims are terrorists but terrorists are Muslims”.

This was what someone told my friend.

Before you say I'm doing too much, let me also tell you what happened last Saturday. I was taking a walk around 6:30 AM. A bike carrying three men, seemingly farmers, passed by me. One of them shouted "Boko Haram!" Probably because I was dressed in all black jilbab. Just a girl on a morning walk, but to them, I was a terrorist. Or maybe it was just them being ‘funny’.

This wasn't an isolated incident. I've had a lecturer call my friends and I "Boko Haram" in a class of more than a hundred people. In front of everyone. Like it was a joke. And whenever she had any negative narrative to push,the character would always be a Muslim.

So no, I'm not doing too much. I'm doing exactly enough for someone who has to live with this.

There's this friend of mine. Very smart girl. At least that was what I thought. Reads widely. We've had countless conversations about books, and recently in this planning phase of my TEDx event, about Chimamanda, about the way stories impact how we see the world. She's watched "The Danger of a Single Story" TED talk. Quoted it, even. Talked about how damaging it is to reduce entire groups of people to one narrow narrative. You don't wantbto know how impressed I was when I heard her talk about it. Finally someone who knows stuff outside of pathology and celebrity gossip!

And then the insecurity issues started spiking recently. The news got more. And suddenly her social media was full of posts with one clear message: Muslims are terrorists.

I tried to talk to her about it. Once. She stood her ground. Said she knew what she was saying, believed what she believed. And I just stood there thinking about the irony so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Here's someone who understood perfectly well that reducing Africans to a single story of poverty and helplessness was wrong. Who also got angry when her father's neighbour abroad was shocked that she could be as brilliant as she was, as if being African automatically meant being backward. Who saw the problem Chimamanda saw with assuming all Nigerians are scammers, all Mexicans are criminals, all women are emotional.

But somehow, when it came to Muslims, the single story was fine. More than fine. It was the truth.

Let me be clear about something: this isn't me explaining myself or defending my faith. I'm past that point. I'm past the stage where I feel the need to prove to anyone that I'm not a terrorist, that my religion doesn't teach violence, that the 1.8 billion Muslims in the world aren't a monolithic group of extremists waiting to cause harm or bomb any public spaces they show up at.

This is what I would call intellectual laziness. About the failure of critical thinking. About how quickly we abandon nuance when it's convenient.

In Chimamanda's talk, she mentions how her mother always reminded her about their houseboy's poverty. "His family is so poor," her mother would say whenever young Chimamanda wasted food. So poverty became the only story she knew about this boy's family. Until she visited their village and saw the beautiful baskets his brother wove by hand. Technical, creative, skilled work. And she realized: there was more to them than their poverty. They were full human beings with talents, dignity, complexity.

That's the danger of a single story. It flattens people. Reduces them to one dimension. Makes it impossible to see their full humanity.

So why is this same logic so hard to apply to Muslims? Double standards, isn't it?

You see one misinterpreted verse on Twitter, read one sensationalized headline, watch one news report about extremism, and suddenly 1.8 billion people are terrorists. Never mind that statistically, according to the FBI's own data, Muslims account for less than 2.5% of terrorist attacks in the United States. Never mind that the vast majority of terrorism victims globally are themselves Muslims. Never mind that equating Islam with terrorism makes as much sense as equating Christianity with the Crusades or the KKK. Nevermind that your nice neighbour that greets you rvery morning and has been knocking on your house door for the past 20 years to share fried meat every Eid. Nevermind that your roommate who plugs your phone when you fall asleep watching tiktok is Muslim and yet, despite thr number of times you've had altercations, you've not been stabbed in the guts or kidnapped on your way back from class.

Because facts don't really matter when you're committed to a single story.

I have lovely friends who photograph the moon with the kind of reverence most people reserve for sacred things. I know my Muslim folks who write poetry about stars, who can't bring themselves to kill ants, who spend their free time volunteering at outreaches and homeless shelters. I know Muslims who are doctors saving lives, teachers shaping minds, engineers building infrastructure, artists creating beauty…who are intellectuals crazy about AI, obsessed with hematology, intrigued by textile patterning.

But that's not the story you see, is it? That's not what trends on social media or makes headlines. Because "Local Muslim Has Normal Day, Hurts Nobody" isn't clickable. "Muslims Are Actually Just Regular People Living Regular Lives" doesn't generate engagement.

What generates engagement is fear. Othering. The comfort of believing that evil is always external, always identifiable, always confined to people who don't look like you or pray like you or think like you.

Here's what bothers me most: the intellectual inconsistency. The selective application of critical thinking. You'll rightfully call out stereotypes about your own group while perpetuating them about others. You'll demand nuance for yourself while denying it to people you've decided don't deserve it.

You understand that not all Africans are poor. Not all Nigerians are scammers. Not all women are emotional. Not all men are predators. Not all Yoruba people are diabolical. Not all Igbos are occultic or heartless. But somehow, all Muslims are terrorists? The logic breaks down so obviously it's almost embarrassing.

This is what absolutist thinking does. It makes you lazy. It allows you to avoid the hard work of actually learning about people, of engaging with complexity, of accepting multiple truths at once. It's easier to paint with broad strokes than to acknowledge that human beings are complicated, that religions are interpreted in countless ways, that no group is a monolith.

The Quran, which apparently everyone on Twitter and Instagram has expertly analyzed based on out-of-context screenshots, actually says: "Whoever kills an innocent person, it is as if they have killed all of humanity." It commands respect for parents, kindness to neighbors, care for the poor, gentleness with animals. But you won't see those verses trending. You won't see them quoted by people who've made up their minds that Muslims are the enemy.

And look, I'm not saying every Muslim is perfect. We're human. We have our extremists, just like every other religion, every other ideology, every other group has theirs. But judging 1.8 billion people by their worst representatives while judging yourself by your best intentions is not logic. It's bias. A little bit dumb,if I may.

People tell me I'm being extra. That I should give it a rest. That not everything needs to be a teaching moment. But as someone who's been on the receiving end of this prejudice, who's seen the weird look people suppress when we meet for the first time and they size up my dressing, especially in elite gatherings…who's had to prove my humanity more times than I can count, I can't give it a rest.

Because this isn't an abstract concept. This isn't academic either. This is my life. These are my friends, my family, my community being reduced to a single story that erases our full humanity.

So no, I won't give it a rest. I'll keep saying it: You cannot look at a person's external characteristics, whether that's their religion, their race, their nationality, their gender, and assume you know everything about them. You cannot build your entire understanding of a group on the worst examples you've seen amplified by algorithms designed to make you angry and afraid.

If you can understand why it's wrong to assume all Africans are backward, all women are weak, all Nigerians are criminals, then you can understand why it's wrong to assume all Muslims are terrorists.

Unless, of course, you don't want to understand. Unless the single story is more comfortable than the complicated truth. Unless your need to have a clear enemy outweighs your commitment to basic logic and human decency.

In which case, the problem isn't Islam. The problem is you.