Every night I brush my teeth with three devout Muslim men. Well to be fair I brush my teeth as they go about their daily chores washing dishes, checking laundry, watching t.v., and even praying. To be even more fair they don’t know I am watching. Creepy I know, but their apartment is across a ten foot alley from mine and neither of us has glass windows, just bars. 

This month I live above a restaurant in the heart of Kuala Lumpur or KL as the natives call it. We sleep on mattresses on the floor of a large room they have re purposed for a church. It isn’t like any American church I’ve ever been to in fact it is far more akin to some of the Haitian churches I have visited. Its 8 foot windows have only wire and old poster board to cover them. The rain blows in and cools us off at night. The bathrooms are luxurious for World Race standards, aka there is a sink and a shower head in make shift room with bowls to flush the toilet. Our kitchen is two tables in a room with a sink, and I have more than once woken up to the scurry of a roach on my pillow. Yet, there is electricity, clean water, a lock on the doors, and our 5 Malay roommate to make us feel more at ease.

The sad part is this shouldn’t be so shocking to me. Coexisting shouldn’t surprise me at all! But it did. 

So tonight as I sat there swishing my Listerine my eyes burning with tears, it wasn’t from the alcohol burning the germs in my mouth. (the commercials are a total lie by the way, and the only refreshing part about mouth wash is spitting it out!) But my eyes welled with humility. Because despite my years studying international relations and politics at Wheaton, or my time living in Chicago, or growing up in D.C., or my parents, or my travels across the globe and back, I had become racist! 

Here I was puzzling at how these Muslim men and I could be living within literally feet of each other, as if we weren’t both human. As if they didn’t cry when the used mouth wash, or clean their dishes, or read the newspaper. I didn’t have to wonder for long how I had become like this, because I knew. I knew that thence 2001 when I was only 12 years old the media had painted these men as my enemy. I watched movie after movie where their only depiction was as terrorists. I saw faces that looked like theirs on the news. I saw names like theirs scroll across the bottom of the t.v. attached to bombs that killed people in markets and buses. I was racist because I was trained to see all Muslims as the enemy.

That sounds extreme doesn’t it? It sounds like I am claiming to be brainwashed, like I am not responsible for my own opinions. But that is the truth, I have been culturally conditioned to believe that all men like this would hurt me if given the opportunity. Jack Bower taught me that. I have been taught that all Muslim mosques are covers for terror cells, Lie to me taught me that. I have been taught that the war on terror looks like Muslim men who wear facial hair and robes in public, the nightly news taught me that. 

But today in the market I learned that me and a woman in a full burka use the same shampoo, and me and little 6 year old Muslim boy both like fruit mentos, and me and my Muslim neighbors prefer milk in our tea and to use Listerine after we brush our teeth. 

I know back home today there is a lot of fear. Fear that people will retaliate for what happened to Osama Bin Laden. But I can tell you that same fear ran through the veins of Muslim men and women all across the globe the day after September 11th. Fear that because of what one group of Muslims did there would be retaliation. It’s been almost a decade since Osama’s name became a household insignia for terror, and in those ten years, almost half of my life, I had been taught to associate him with all Muslim men. But so had my neighbors. In their newspaper I am the enemy, on their nightly news it is my father, brother, or son that is killing their people. To them I am the enemy. Which is exactly what Satan wants. He wants these men to see people who look like me, who talk like me, who dress like me and to judge us, the same way I judged them. To not see my humanity. After all that is what racism is, it is to dehumanize someone.

Maybe somehow you have been able to stand strong against the media barrage or the societal disapproval of Muslims. But if by the off chance in light of recent events you are like me and need to be reminded. 

Then allow me the humbling privilege to remind you that women in burkas need shampoo too and that they too have kids that beg for candy at the check out line. Because “All men are created equal” is more than an upstanding sentiment; it is a fundamental truth! Elaborated on by one of our founding fathers but testified to originally in scripture when Jesus came for all men, Jew, and gentile alike! And the blood that He shed wasn’t just for sinners like you and me, but for the Muslim men who I brush my teeth with every night.