When my Malaysian immigrant parents bought their first ever house in America (actually still to this day their only house),

It was in a neighborhood in what was a small town about 20-30 minutes away from the Capitol city in Boise, ID

It was around 2000 and we were the first non-white family to move into that neighborhood.

Our experience there was a mixed bag.

There was some of the nicest neighbrods who helped us move in with their pick up trucks saving us a ton of money which we didn’t have at the time.

And even a year ago when my parents moved to California, many of the neighbors got their pickup trucks again and helped them with the move.

But that was the good parts. Sadly there were also other kinds of folk.

We were Buddhist/Hindus but because we were brown and many people didn’t know about Hinduism, basically all brown Asian people of middle-eastern or south Asian ancestry/ethnicity/looks got lumped in with the same stereotypes

And my parents had met some Malaysians who were studying abroad here in Idaho which got them so excited they invited them over.

They were Malaysian Muslims wearinf the headscarf and stuff and so when they were leaving our house

My mom gave the wife of the couple a big hug and one of the not so friendly neighbors saw that so I’m guessing they assumed we were Muslim.

And I got lots of terrorist comments and mean bomb jokes thrown at me.

I guess I never understood Xenophobia towards Muslims

Because my mom (who is Hindu) had best friends from her childhood in India who were Muslims

And also I had visited Malaysia which is 60% Muslim.

And they were very open minded and modern people just like here in the West.

In fact Malaysia was far more progressive than India (which is where my mom grew up during her childhood because Malaysia was having race riots at the time so she stayed in India for her safety).

Malaysia is a multi-ethic multi-religious countries made of multi-generation Malays (Indonesian immigrants), multi-generations Chinese, and multi-generation Indians.

And they all date in high school and are super liberal-progressive and big of fighting for women’s rights and taking rose and sexual assault seriously it is very surprising

Since on average most Hindus and Muslims I’ve met or seen in India or the Middle East are very conservative and the record on women’s sexual rights in India and the Middle East is very limited still to this day.

So I guess SouthEast Asia or at least Malaysia is oddly different.

So my experience with Muslims in general is probably quite different from most conservative Westerners who haven’t traveled I guess.

It’s sad how ignorance and lack of exposure is probably one of the biggest contributors to bigotry and ignorance, of course trying to maintain power and control over minorities is probably also a strong reason.

I remember in Middle School all the stuff people kept saying about Hindusm

“Why does your religious step on babies?” Etc etc.

I remember asking my mom that when I got back home from school and she laughed saying “If we stepped on babies I’m pretty sure India wouldn’t be overpopulated”

But prejudice by the majority race/religion isn’t limited to America.

When I visited Malaysia (I’m an American citizen but was a child immigrant who left Malaysia at the age of 5 and grew up here in the US my entire life since the age of 5) in 2007 there was an old fair skinned Malay lady in the train and when an dark skinned Indian man sat next to her

She started yelling racist things to him telling him to go back to India

Even though he’s a 4th generation Tamil (Tamil is South Indian) Malaysian.

And in India recently I’m starting to see some rising Hindu nationalism similar to the Trump Christian nationalism.

Both of which are silly since they go against the founding Constituonal principles of secularism and religious freedom enshrined in both country’s constitutions.

I don’t understand why but this phenomenon of the majority race or religion fearing minorities and wanting to suppress minorties to maintain power

Is quite widespread on a global scale.

Anyway there wasn’t really a point to this ramble other than to share a story and some perspective on race and religion issues.