The media plays an important role, of course, in perpetuating and sustaining ideas about Muslims as violent, but I want to think about the media in a more robust way, because the media is made of human beings who are in our society and they feed particular appetites. Without taking them off the hook or not holding them accountable, I want to say that when we're thinking about education, for example, education should happen more broadly and it should include, for example, media training sessions, so reporters can understand when they are participating in conversations that include entrenched ideas about Islam as inherently violent.
Also, something that lately has been happening is that people in the media will make a false equivalency between two situations, one that is really harmful and one that is not. I think that when people make statements that are Islamophobic and that are publicized in the media, it is the responsibility of political leaders to really lead the nation and to call out Islamophobia or systemic racism when they see it and when they hear it.
The thing about social media that's interesting—a lot of studies have been coming out—is that people online sort of live in a social media bubble. They don't actually encounter...they end up encountering news that they already agree with, and they don't actually seek out and encounter, necessarily, news that they do not agree with. Hence the focus on systemic. When dealing with systemic problems, the response has to also be systemic.
I see people will often blame the media for the problem, and I think the media is responsible, but I think the media is also often a mirror of us and is reflecting the things we as a society are believing. I do think that political leaders have an important role to play in leading the nation toward a kind of plurality that respects the human dignity of everyone, where people are not forced to, first and foremost, prove their humanity somehow in order to be treated decently.