“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

A polarizing topic comes up. We get anxious. Adrenalin floods into our veins, and our hands shake with the rhythm of our drumming hearts. We don’t just disagree. We disagree big-time. This is a sensitive subject, and today we will not compromise. Today, we are settling the score.

We are prisoners of our nervous systems. We salivate over the opportunity to enter intellectual combat. I want to destroy your arguments. You want to explode mine.

With our emotions hijacked, we do not realize that our engagement is severely impoverished, and our discourse inevitably fruitless. Indeed, we will both walk away with our beliefs reaffirmed and our mutual hatred reinforced. Instead of understanding you through your experiences, I fill in the blanks with my own prejudices. In the end, my heart oozes hatred towards an enemy carved out of my own ignorance. You become a deformed shadow of my own evil.

Has the thought of exchanging not just thoughts, but entire perspectives, ever occurred to you? What if we swapped minds for an hour and understood one another’s sincerest intentions? What if you could look through a window and see into my sincerest intentions? What if I could replay, episode after episode, the very experiences that weaved together your moral fibre, and understand you as you ought to be understood?

Last week, three young Canadian Muslims (one a McGill alumnus) were arrested for allegedly partaking in a terror plot. No evidence has so far been released, no verifiable facts exposed, no hearing conducted. Still, these men are already considered terrorists by many Canadians. Stephen Harper took the opportunity to alarm us about the “very real threat” of “homegrown terrorism.” So much for presumption of innocence.

That the likes of Canadian-born-and-raised Dr. Khurram Sher, respected pathologist, father of three, superstar hockey player, even a former Canadian Idol contestant, are being cynically used by Muslim Canadian Congress founder Tarek Fatah to justify nation-wide suspicion of anyone with ties to Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Somalia – no matter how thoroughly Canadian – is embarrassing in the land of true patriot love.

Earlier this year, we saw our country criticizing the wardrobe of a handful of Canadian women, and dictating to them how they ought to dress. Isn’t that oppression?

Bigotry also reigns in the debate over the Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan, with thousands of Americans likening it to the erection of a statue of Hitler at the former site of Auschwitz. Another mosque, Masjid Manhattan, has been there since 1970, even before the Twin Towers. Doesn’t this imply that all Muslims are complicit with the attacks on 9/11, and that all mosques are training grounds for terrorists?

When will we take the time to ask our fellow Canadian her reasons for wearing the niqab? When will we invite Canadian men and women – besides alarmists like Tarek Fatah and his ilk – to talk on our shows and express those mainstream views of Islam adopted by millions of Muslims, not just a few radicals?

We must remember that bigotry is a process, not an event. Next time we find ourselves infuriated by an individual or a group, we must ask ourselves a prudent question: did we exchange minds?