While one is understood as prejudice and discrimination, the other is defined as an intense and irrational fear that, ironically, terrifies me.

It’s 2017, I’ve just come home from 5th-grade English, turned on the television just in time to hear the words “Islamophobic Attack,” words used to describe the now nationally remembered Quebec City mosque shooting. Six people are dead and 19 injured, all while trying to simply practice their religion—a religion that I share. It's a horrible tragedy that will be repeated on the news all week, “the Islamophobic attack.” 

The Cambridge dictionary defines the term Islamophobia as an “unreasonable dislike or fear of, and prejudice against, Muslims or Islam.” As such, according to every report and headline that week, Alexandre Bissonnette had ended the lives of six people because he had an unreasonable dislike or fear.

The use of phobia in this word did not make sense to me; my then 11-year-old mind went to Ron Weasley in the Chamber of Secrets, terrified of spiders, dragged into Aragog’s den against his will, and paralyzed with fear. What Alexandre Bissonnette had done was the exact opposite. 

However, it was far from the first time I’d hear the contradictory statement. Four years later, the Afzaal family was killed in another “Islamophobic Attack,” and at 15 years old, I still could not wrap my head around this. Again, a man, Nathaniel Veltman, had committed a premeditated and hateful act that killed four people, one that an Ontario Supreme Court Justice deemed as terrorism, but still his actions were deemed and reported as fearful or prejudiced. 

It’s become a recurring theme: a man walks into a mosque and opens fire. Another screams slurs on the street before throwing a punch. A woman’s hijab is torn off on the subway. These attacks happen again and again, and every time, the headline reads “Islamophobic attack.” And every time, my fear of the term grows. 

Being Black, I understood from a young age what racism and discrimination could and did look like, taught through family, television, and real-world experiences. Which made it all the more confusing when the same kind of hate against my Muslim identity was described in softer, sugarcoated terms.

It's clear today at 20 years old that “Islamophobia” in regular usage has expanded its meaning to include hate-motivated attacks rather than just fear. As a media and communication student, I’ve come to understand that words themselves can be arbitrary, but the reactions they evoke are real. While the term may be understood as hate, it still carries phobia, allowing anti-Muslim hate to borrow the language of fear.

On May 18th, two teenagers, 18 and 17 years old, killed three people in a mosque shooting in San Diego. In an alleged manifesto, the shooters listed the actions of both Alexandre Bissonnette and Nathaniel Veltman under “heroes and inspirations.”

What happened at the San Diego Islamic Center was not fear, but hate, taught clearly enough to be repeated. When the same word can be used to describe an uninformed fear, a hateful comment, and a mass killing, it becomes harder to tell where fear ends and hate begins. 

In March of this year, the United Kingdom government released a definition of anti-Muslim hostility, meant to combat a growing number of cases. Their reasoning for such a term was simple: “If you are unable to define an issue, you are far less able to tackle it.” Within this document it is stated that a definition will allow for understanding when debate and fear cross the line into discrimination, putting an appropriate name to such cases. 

Canada should be paying attention. 

Just two years ago, MPs were told that more Muslims had been killed in targeted attacks in Canada over the past seven years than in any other G7 country, a fact that sits directly beside the language we continue to use. “Islamophobia” can no longer be treated as the default, not when those in the Muslim community have been killed on sidewalks and mosques, and attacks are studied as “inspiration.” 

As a student journalist, I am actively learning how to improve on writing stories and headlines while reading published stories about people like me being killed, harmed and threatened, reported through phobia. Before a reader even reaches the story, what are they being taught to understand? Are they being told this is anti-Muslim hate, or are they being handed a word that lets the hate sit behind something softer? 

I know how discrimination and racism are identified when it targets one part of my identity, it points to history, ideology and violence, and I want that same clarity for my Muslim identity.