Marcus Vincent Brown
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The acknowledgement of fear in itself presents little harm. If anything, it is a natural response to stimuli intended to keep us out of harm’s way.  At the same time, while fear can assist in our decision-making, it should not dictate it.

This is directly applicable to the story of 26-year-old Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, who was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight after speaking Arabic on the phone with his uncle, who lives in Baghdad.  Makhzoomi is a student at the University of California-Berkeley and an Iraqi refugee who had just attended an event in which he was able to speak to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Before the flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Oakland could take off, Makhzoomi found himself being escorted off the plane because a fellow passenger overheard the conversation he was having with his uncle in Arabic.

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Unfortunately, Islamophobia has rooted itself deeply in the mind of the average American post-9/11 and the prominence of terrorism abroad. In our daily lives, we often do not find ourselves in situations in which we must make judgment calls like the other passenger made upon hearing Mahkzoomi’s phone conversation. It is easy to take comfort in the idea that if one were in a similar situation, there would be a different outcome. It’s easy to believe that one would be able to apply the same attitude of trust and understanding present in the other 99.99 percent of situations. However, this is where fear comes into play.

Islamophobia does not to be practiced consistently to be harmful and perpetuate a culture of prejudice. The majority of us wake up and go to bed everyday without having that “what if?” moment, the moment in which logic and an ordinarily trusting nature is overshadowed by looming doubt.

It is in this moment that suspicion, ordinarily buried under the mundane and innocuous, can take hold. Makhzoomi told the New York Times that he felt as though he was spoken to “Like I was an animal” by the airline employee who removed him, and the truth of the matter is that he may have very well been seen as just that in the moment.

The “what if?” moment makes animals out of rational individuals and skews their perception to see the world as full of animals as well. It boils down to fear that doesn’t have to be based on any tangible threat.

Once reasoning has been surrendered to doubt, all that remains is dormant suspicion bolstered by the prejudice and misconceptions we encounter regularly whether conscious of them or not. The only way to truly combat Islamophobia is to be prepared to engage with it not only when it is comfortable and detached but also in those moments when the cause for fear appears to be imminent. It is our ability to think beyond that fear and base our decisions on more than knee-jerk reactions that separate us from the animals.