By You’re probably reading this and thinking, “Oh get over it; it’s happened now — so you just have to deal with it.”
Deal with it? Oh, I understand. You want me to live as I lived before the country I’m in went to polling stations and changed the very course of history. You want me to resume life as though nothing has changed — when in actuality, everything has.
Brexit was something I didn’t vote for, but must now live with. This is a sentiment that is not exclusive to me, as many minorities feel the same.
We feel robbed of our futures which seem to have been taken swiftly by those among us who are intolerant and ignorant.
Actually, the only good thing that came out of the vote is the statistics which show many young people voted to remain, which leaves me with small glimpses of hope amid the gloom that awaits us.
Once again we have the older generation ruining things for younger generations by slowing the pace of change and progression. Same story, just a different time. (Only then, you were the young — and now it’s you slowing the pace of progression.)
You see, they voted for a future they will not be here to clean up, as that’s a burden which now rests on our shoulders. I just hope we don’t leave the next generation with one as heavy as it seems this one.
My view on history is based on an idea that we must learn of its brutality, but not add to it; we must grow from it, but not become an era that others look on with disgust and horror.
I fear that with the Brexit vote we have done exactly this. Rather than look back in history and learn, we have recreated and mimicked a time where minorities felt threatened and unwelcomed.
A few days after the outcome was announced, I found posts flooding my social media about instances of racism and Islamophobia.
In a matter of days, Great Britain became “not so great.” That is, of course, if you ever thought it was great to begin with, We are, as I have to remind you, a Country rooted in a history of colonization and the reason many other places now celebrate an independence day.
The country was in disarray almost immediately after with the very leaders of the leave party leaving themselves, our Prime Minister resigning, and a new un-elected one is now head of our country. This, I may add, all happened in a matter of weeks following the Brexit results.
We weren’t perfect before, but it seems obvious that the Brexit vote gave confidence to bigots, making it truly an imperfect state of disillusion and hypocrisy.
Brexit has made the intolerant and ignorant feel as though the discussions and views they used to have quietly at their kitchen tables are now views the majority hold.
I’ve been asked by people across the pond how it feels to live in a post-Brexit Britain. I’ve been asked if I have voiced my concerns to the people who voted for it. I’ve been asked what it has done for the home I live in. I answer in an attempt to convey my message to those concerned, and to those who put our country in this position.
It gave them the boost they needed to act out the hate that has been in them all their lives.
Don’t tell me to get over it. You may be living in some paradise now that your dream came true – but we, the minorities, are living in hell on earth in a post-Brexit Britain.
I now live with the knowledge that my safety is compromised.
I now live with an odd sense of fear when my loved ones who wear the hijab go on public transport or aren’t home by a certain time.
I now know that it’s a possibility that the businesses I frequent are under threat == as people seem to think the owners deserve to be jobless simply because they accommodate Muslims.
I feel like I’ve been put in a time machine and taken back to the past — a past I’m sure you like as it’s one you appear so determined to recreate – a past where you were men and women with glory, who took from others and never looked back.
The only time machine I would go in willingly is one which would take you back so far that you could see how well the world was doing before you interfered with your false sense of entitlement and warped savior complex.
But of course that will never happen. You conveniently forget that part of history, that part which labels you as thieves and barbarians.
You won’t allow it.
And if we’ve learnt one thing — it’s that you always succeed in covering up your mistakes or finding ways of relabeling them victories.
Contributed by Muslim Girl staff writer, Iqra Mehdi.