It's Ted talks daily, let me leave you a sad side effect of violent extremism is how it's put an entire faith, Islam, into the crossfire of racists and Islamophobia.

In today's Talk from Wally, Bad Day, a TED at PMI 20 20, he tells us how he overcame fear and hate in a small Midwestern town to build bridges, reminding an entire community that we aren't so different or divided as things seem.

Four years ago, something profound happened in my life, I saw the fear and mental effects of racism, hate crimes and Islamophobia was having in my community. I'm an American Muslim of Nigerian descent, and growing up, my parents instilled in me the importance of community and serving others. My mom is one of an African proverb from our Uraba tribe, which states any alcohol will be more on Tomoe, which translated means a single person gives birth to a child, but every other person looks after the child.

Now, the essence of this proverb is, even though a woman gives physical birth to each particular child, the whole community plays an important role in looking after all children. Growing up, it was not uncommon for me to come home and see my mom preparing a meal for what felt like the entire neighborhood, I mean, she routinely shared food with people struggling and I recall one day being angry as a teenager. It was a hot day. I just completed doing errands.

I was looking forward to a nice home cooked meal. But when I came home, there was little food left because I had gone to the neighborhood kids again. I was not happy. I just wanted to come home, eat my full. My mom consoled me and I settle for smaller portions while she prepared another meal. Now, I certainly did not appreciate that day, but later realised my mom was providing a safe space and food for people in the community that needed it, and your call will be able to weigh in on Tommo.

She was looking after all the children. I came to the United States in 1999 and attended the University of Wisconsin in the city of Lacrosse, a beautiful city located along the Mississippi River. And lacrosse was lovely. I mean, despite the frigid subzero temperature and lack of diversity, people were generally warm and caring. My biggest culture shock, despite the fact that I came to in the summer, was seeing people sunbathing and laying out of lawns. It just didn't make any sense to me.

Why would anyone choose to sunbathe in Beşiktaş bodies in the hot sun in Nigeria, in Africa when the sun comes out. You stay in the shade. But here it just was the opposite. When I was five years old, something regrettable happened in Nigeria when the country's first democratically elected president required millions of undocumented immigrants to leave the country. And this response was because of religious riots that occurred in parts of northern Nigeria in the 1980s. The sentiment shared by some was that it was caused by undocumented immigrants.

But official sources later disputed that nevertheless, the army was activated and over two million people, including children, were sent packing. The United States government strongly decried this action at a time. I felt echoes of that history the morning of September 11, 2001. I knew immediately there was going to be a strong backlash against Muslims, despite reports that over 80 percent of global terror attack victims are Muslims. And also because I've seen before how when something incredibly bad happens, the easiest thing to do is to find easy targets to blame.

I feel deeply sad for everyone. The loss of life in the Twin Towers, it was wrong. I also felt intensely angry that terrorists had just hijacked plane full of innocent people, but also hijacked my religion, detained my beautiful, peaceful faith, Islam, into something twisted and nasty that I could not recognize.

And in turn, my adopted country started to turn against one another. The country feels like a powder keg waiting to explode, and indeed, within days there were increased hate crimes against Muslims or people that look like Muslims. Hate crimes continue to rise in the country many years after. In 2012, for example, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was attacked and people were killed because of your faith. In the years later, they didn't make it any better between twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, the increased number of hate crime incidents against Muslims actually surpassed the figures reported during the year of the 9/11 attacks.

In my own household, the run up to the 2016 presidential election was when we felt the effects of increased hateful, racist and Islamophobic rhetoric reaching closer to home. My wife and I try to shield our kids from the news like noxious tear gas radio all around us, the ugly reality was closing in and our kids were choking on the fear and hate. My 12 year old son routinely came home, panicked that his dad was going to be killed in it, our family was going to be deported or put an internment camps.

He had been identified as a Muslim was about then. My 13 year old daughter simply disconnected and shut up completely. My wife also felt the heightened sense of fear. She focused their energy on securing American passports for an entire family. She didn't want her family to go to mosque to pray and also explored it would be safer for her family to go to Nigeria. Our family was traumatized. In our fight and flight, insects were in full effect. For my part, I was pissed off that instead of being a brother and sister's keeper.

My adoptive country has been divided by race and religion. And one of our local Muslim community to do something to quell that hate, we were all dealing with trauma. The Yoba problem call to me any uncle will be more violent, although I felt that our larger community had an important role to play and that if we connected with people and people that really know who we were, they would see that we were part of the fabric of America just like they were.

I got word from a friend at a local interfaith group was looking to build bridges with Muslims, but they first needed Muslims to be part of the group. And I remember the first day of our meeting, Wednesday, February twenty four, twenty six to seven pm, there were 12 of us in attendance. And consisted of eight Christians and four Muslims, including myself. We shared why we were there and we were all proud to be citizens of this great country, an American Muslim who immigrated thirty nine years ago said that he was afraid for his children's future.

Another Muslim who escaped violent persecution from his home country said that he was afraid for the first time in a long time, afraid of what the future held for Muslims and children. I was afraid for my kids to. I wanted to make sure that our community was a safe and thriving place for my kids and everyone else, and I felt that most of my negative experiences up until that point were more about me being black than Muslim. But I also felt negative microaggression.

As I recall, several years after 9/11, a colleague of mine mentioned that I could potentially be a terrorist by. And what whether this was this statement was made in jest, conjecture, just plain ignorant, the statement really hurt. It was also a side reminder that some people are going to judge me and see me as dangerous without even knowing me. Christians around a table said they were there to protect and support us. And I got to say, it was such a relief to be in a company of people that cared and wanted to help.

We committed that day to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another. Our next meeting, sorry, group expand and four others joined us, including members of the Jewish and Buddhist faiths and a student. Our group was diverse and strong. We had people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 70s, and a local social justice advocate who is 95 years old and not interested in sitting on the sidelines, a former missionary.

This 95 year old woman also experienced injustice under apartheid South Africa, and that experience made her an activist and a feminist. The La Crosse Interfaith shoulder to shoulder network was born and our focus was clear and an anti-Muslim sentiment and hatred towards any targeted group as I stood shoulder to shoulder. And May 20, 16, the local Muslim community issued a statement rejecting hate in January 2017, a presidential order banning immigrants from seven Muslim Muslim countries was declared. This Muslim ban, which went into effect on January twenty seven twenty seventeen, created tremendous anger in our community that needed an outlet.

A small group of us plan and organize a community rally and started to get the word out. I mean, we're a regular folks, not community organizers. We'd never done anything like this before.

We shared information on Facebook with our neighbors and friends and had no idea who would come, but also knew that it was important to share the powerful, simple idea behind us action. And your call will be more violent tomorrow. We were standing up for each other and each other's children. And people showed up. Young and old, it was extremely cold and below freezing, but that didn't stop people from coming. The community was responding to our call for help.

Over several hundred allies came to the event that day. A Jewish woman whose family escaped religious persecution in the Holocaust and Slovakia came to support us. We sparked something beautiful across that day, we made compassion, equality and justice, everyone's business and made everyone's business to stand shoulder to shoulder together, fight and fear and hate the little across.

This was a very big crowd, or perhaps even more importantly, it gave my family and others and an end in a sense of support and comfort that we were not alone in the more of our neighbors and communities stood with us than against us.

The lessons I've learned from these experiences are they are good people in every community and your community will stand shoulder to shoulder with you if you make it your business and call would be more in on Tommo. When you really connect with the community and are vulnerable in your quest for support and communion, good people will come forth. And sometimes all it takes is one spark to set into motion. This year, hate crimes remain high, with latest FBI report showing 70 percent of those crimes being motivated by race, ethnicity, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and persistent discrimination, including the death of George Floyd, show that we have a lot of work to do in society.

I mean, this is not one person groups or organizations problem, but all of our problems, we all have goodness in our hearts. So let's not sit on the sidelines and bemoan the way. Bewail Tomáš. All of our children deserve protection and help, and staying silent does not make things better. So let's make our community and world a better place by making stand up to discrimination and hate everyone's business. PR ex.