London, Ontario

Last week there was a dreadful incidence in London, Ontario. A 20-year old man purposefully drove his truck into a Muslim family of five who were standing on a sidewalk, killing four of them and seriously injuring the fifth, a 9-year old boy. This boy lost his mother, father, sister, and grandmother within a matter of seconds and is now an orphan. This incidence was a hate crime. The 20-year old who killed this family was a devout fundamentalist Christian who believed Muslims were terrible people, ultimately giving him the motive to run his car into the poor family.

We must not let our belief in God turn into a belief of hate. If God is anything, He is love. If you give into hate and commit criminal acts against different religious or ethnic groups, you are not doing the work of God or love, you are doing the work of hate. Hate is wrong and nothing good can ever be built on it. Hate is against everything that makes us human and when we give into hate, we lose our humanity and become mindless, sadistic beasts. I cannot believe how someone can hate another religious group so much so that they can drive their truck into a family of Muslims and kill all of them except a 9-year old boy. I don’t even want to think about what that boy must be going through. He has just lost his entire family because someone hated his ethnicity that much. This hate crime has not only impacted the family, but Canada as a whole. This incidence has brought nothing but spiritual darkness and catastrophe to them. Hate crimes strike at the very root of civilization and nothing good can ever come out of them. You can’t build a better country on hate. Many politicians talk about how we need stronger laws against hate crimes and although I agree with that, I think that’s only a small portion of what is needed. What we really need to do is to let people know that hate is not the way to go. To overcome hate, we need to present better alternatives and preach love. We have to let people know that they need to acquire social skills and have an inclusive mindset. That way, they’ll be able to get along with different types of people instead of hating on certain groups and wanting to destroy them. We simply cannot allow for this kind of hatred to keep building up. If we do, more hate crimes will keep happening, Let's all take the effort to spread the message that hate leads to darkness and love leads to light.