“Ever since a small portion of “Muslims” have been attacking others, it has been extremely hard to live life as a Muslim, especially as a Muslim teenager,” Shyaan Khan, president of the Muslim Student Association said. “The media is constantly twisting our religion and portraying it as everything but what our religion is really about –  peace.”

Around the world, terrorist attacks are becoming more common in different countries, and are casting a negative light on the religion of Islam.

These attacks are performed by “Islamist” terrorists or extremists, but what majority of us don’t realize is that these people don’t represent Islam in any way, shape, or form; but rather insult the name of Islam to many Muslims.

Just last month, two “Islamist” terrorists charged into the office of the well known satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and killed a total of 12 people, while injuring 11 in Paris.

France has “hate speech” laws that are made to protect certain individuals and groups from being insulted/ defamed if they do not belong to an ethnicity, nation, race, religion, sexual orientation, or if they have a handicap.

This attack was the result of a series of inappropriate and mockery images of the Prophet, the founder of Islam, which many Muslims found offensive. In response to this, terrorists felt the need to display their concern in a very violent way.

However, most Muslims do not agree to the actions posed by Islamic groups who claim they kill for the sake of Islam.

“People of different religions all have to adapt to society, and because our country exercises freedom of speech, people have to understand that we must control our actions, especially our Muslim community, since the media has been shaping our religion in a very negative way,” junior Tara Saghir said. “In the Quran, there is a verse which states that ‘He who kills one soul, it is as if he has killed all of mankind; and he who saves one soul it is as if he has saved all of mankind’ (5:32)”.

For many years now, Islam has been misunderstood as a religion of violence.  People who claim to be a part of Islamic organizations and organize terrorist attacks are constantly giving a bad name to the religion.

“Every religion has to deal with discrimination, but what separates us from the rest is the way we react to this kind of mockery of our religion, and the best way is to stay calm and reserved despite our feelings toward it,” freshman Sam Sharma said. “When I say ‘us’ Muslims, I don’t want myself or my religion to be included with a group of extremists.”

    The Charlie Hebdo publication has added to controversy between what Islam truly preaches and teaches.

“I’m definitely not a fan of the cartoons nor the actions of the radicals, both sides were wrong,” freshman Abdul Rehman Asif said. “We have to keep in mind what the Prophet (s) would want us to do instead of resorting to an attack.”

Muslims around the world have been dealing with the negative interpretation of Islam for years. People will never truly know the kind of discrimination or hateful judgment Muslims constantly receive for the actions carried out by other people, who simply claim to be Muslims.

 “Each religion goes through a point in history where society disregards their rights toward harassment and hate crime and mixes it with freedom of speech and Muslims still haven’t gotten their line drawn between hate crime and freedom of speech,” Usman Hanif, freshman said. “Charlie Hebdo might have taken literal shots, but Muslims take bullets to their hearts everyday.”