I Am a Muslim and It Stops at That —Bashir Lucas Samson Lukman

Last night, two non-Muslim, beautiful young girls—about eight or nine years old—stood in front of the camera and said, “This is for Uncle Lucas.” They blew a kiss and went ahead to perform a choreography. The mother of one of them sent the video to me.

That came at a time when some Nigerians have taken advantage of Donald Trump’s “Christian Genocide” narrative to display their biased disposition against Islam and Muslims in full glare.

Something moved me to share that video and write, “These kids are not Muslims, and can their non-Muslim mothers relate with a terrorist?”

After a while, I thought to myself again, Why? What do I have to prove? — that my kind of Muslim is not a terrorist?

Later, I got on Facebook and read posts from a few friends explaining how tolerant and peaceful they are, and it got me thinking.

It is a dangerous precedent if, in Nigeria, it no longer suffices to identify simply as a Muslim. To be acceptable, you now have to define what kind of Muslim you are: liberal Muslim, moderate Muslim, peaceful Muslim, non-terrorist Muslim, and so on.

When that happens, we will have owned the stereotype. It is okay for a Christian to be just a Christian, a traditionalist to simply identify as one—but for the Muslim? Muslims were profiled after 9/11, and now, are we subjecting ourselves to profiling again in response to the “Christian genocide” claim?

In truth, this so-called genocide is an insecurity problem—one that has claimed the lives of Christians, Muslims, and anyone who finds themselves in the path of senseless violence.

I am a Muslim, and it stops at that. I will not contribute to a world where I must answer for the actions of unnatural men.