I think a key component is that it's difficult to be unproblematically young. You ask lots of times foolish questions as you're exploring and learning about your place in the world and distilling truth from falsehoods. A lot of times the discourse that comes from the top is one that positions our communities as always needing to be on the defensive. I think the government can show leadership by reaffirming our place as equal parts of this community, by allowing us to have the space to probe and to question and to explore, and not always having to explain ourselves foremost as Muslims but to exist as people who belong to a society with everyone else.
