 In our last episode, Calty we used Doug Dieb into the growth of the Islamic State. Today, we bring you personal stories from three Muslim American students and their journey to navigate through a country in a time of great fear and anxiety with the rise of Islamophobia. I sat down with UC Berkeley students Wakhan Khan, Farid Anumdar and Karim Ahmad. I understand that the threat of ISIS is growing day by day and a lot of people associate with ISIS and a lot of people might assume that a lot of Muslims associate with ISIS on a day-to-day basis. But I think ISIS and Islam are two very different things. Islam is not synonymous to ISIS and neither is ISIS synonymous to Islam. ISIS is an organization that claims to represent Islam. Nowhere does Islam represent ISIS. There are a lot of types of Muslims, there are a lot of interpretations of Islam, there are a lot of interpretations of Muslim teachings. ISIS chooses and picks teachings of its choice. It takes interpretations of the Quran, changes those interpretations to how they want them interpreted and then carry them in their actions. For Muslim Americans, phenotypes play a role in what has spent many under constant scrutiny and prejudice from others. When I went to a store, I was wearing my hijab and I asked one of the workers, hey, can you show me where this is? And she treated me so disrespectfully. I left and then I saw another lady ask the same worker and then the worker treated her so nicely. And I was just shocked that just with me wearing a hijab that gave her some sort of justification to treat me not well. I can tell from my friends who do wear hijabs on a day-to-day basis that they do face discrimination and that's one way how I feel so empowered by them is that they're not letting other people's ignorance prevent them from practicing their religion. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad, he created this constitution where the Jews and the Muslims lived in peace. Now that one simple action, the Jews had to take care of the Muslims, the Muslims had to take care of the Jews. In my personal life, I don't necessarily face a lot of injustice per se because of my faith. But I think I can attribute that just because when you see me, I don't have a hijab so there's nothing indicating from the get-go. This is a Muslim, but on a daily basis, there's people always interested in learning more about any certain topic. So I take it upon myself to make it an initiative to change that perspective. In the light of challenges Muslim Americans face with the rise of global terrorism, we also dive into the role of the media in this polarizing debate. I feel like not a lot of people are educated about Islam and so that's why media, with the media box and all these other sources of media, people get their information from them and they believe ISIS is Islam. But in fact, in history, that's not the case. As the Islamic State is gaining momentum, thousands of Westerners have traveled to Turkey and crossing the border into Syria. We all ask why would people support the Taliban? The question Americans find hard to understand. But for some people, when the system is all falling apart, they provided at least a sense of order. They provided a government. And in that territory where ISIS is under control, in fact, they do provide some of the social services. They provide a structure. They're not regarded as corrupt. I mean, at the end of the day, if you just stand around and let wrong things happen, let this perception of ignorance and distrust and hatred towards Islam keep rolling on. You're participating in it at one way or another. So the biggest way to address the issue of intolerance towards people in their everyday lives is to address the issue of where they're getting their knowledge about Islam. It's the fastest growing religion in the world, the fastest, I mean, the largest population of followers. Why are they reducing 1.7 billion people to a few like terrorists, huh?