Hearing the tragic news about the 50 people murdered in Christchurch,  I decided to look into the callous killer who documented his murder rampage on Facebook live. I was livid after hearing about the video that looked like a first-person shooter game, except the targets were just like you and me: Muslim women, men and children. Normal people living peaceful lives and coming to pray together.

I saw that the murderer Brendon Tarrant was an Australian who “was just an ordinary white guy”. He said “my parents are of Scottish, Irish and English stock” and he took  “a stand to ensure a future for his people”. How did this man get the idea that Australia belonged to him? That his ‘people’ needed a future secured against a “large group of ‘invaders’ who seek to occupy [his] people’s lands and ethnically replace [his] own people”? That he had to go to another country and commit such heinous crimes? This man grew up in Australia, where his ancestors emigrated to, where they invaded and occupied the land of the aboriginal people and ethnically replaced them. How did this man grow up not knowing he was the very thing he hated: an immigrant?

As a second generation refugee, I am constantly reminded that I’m ‘not really from here’. I am asked on a daily basis “Where are you really from?” which leads me on to ask why is it that white people are taught to assume that they are natives to wherever they grew up, they are never taught the history of migration and colonisation. Every black history month we look at heritage and slavery, perhaps we also need to recognise in everyone learning about their own histories which often is entwined with others that we begin to understand ourselves, our privileges and our roots.

This made me see a huge flaw in the education system worldwide.

We don’t teach white people where they came from, their origins, history and timelines. We don’t tell them about the mass movements, the melting pots and we definitely don’t teach them about how they came to acquire the land they stake a claim on. We don’t teach them about the colonialism, slavery, exploitation and how the land they think is their’s, simply isn’t. There are dark truths in history but it is important to explore them or the danger is erasure of histories.  Now I’m not saying all Caucasians think this way, we know. this, but the ones that do have managed to grow up their entire lives never wondering how they came to be there and I think we need to ask why? The sense of entitlement manifests structurally and daily in their lives and eventually or immediately in the lives they touch.

Every year Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, which is essentially a holiday to mark their invasion of the native American land. When asked about the holiday, some native Americans described it as a slaughter and one called the world-renowned and revered Christopher Columbus the “first terrorist in America”.

How is it that millions of people celebrate such atrocities every single year and they don’t know about, or choose to ignore, the dark history of these holidays? How is it that this never comes up outside of black history month?

Looking back to my GCSE history lessons, I remember learning about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Tsars of Russia, the American civil rights movement and world war II. This is where the problem lies: the curriculum. Why don’t we go further back? Why have history lessons remained unchanged? We don’t learn about the convicts sent to colonise Australia, the conquistadors’ invasion of South America and the Caribbean and the French colonisation of Africa and the far-east. I remember being taught to look at the commonwealth through a positive light, as a body of nations brought together and “civilised” by the mighty British empire and our beloved Queen Victoria. But we don’t get taught what the Commonwealth really means, what the empire meant, and the enslavement, exploitation, displacement and theft of people, land and history that took place during this period, the effects of which are still being felt today.

So to all those people who feel like immigrants are taking over your land, taking your jobs, taking your money: remember you’re probably an immigrant too. We have a lot more in common than you realise.

I believe that Allah created this vast earth for us to explore, migrate and enjoy regardless of our skin colour. I am grateful for the way I was raised and for Islam that has taught me that no single race is superior to another and that life is precious, no matter who it belongs to.

May Allah give strength to the families of the Christchurch victims and may he have mercy and grant Jannah to the lives that have been so tragically ended.