Today I went to a nearby Big 5 Sporting Goods store. I hadn’t really noticed before, but this store is owned and run by a Pakistani family. As I was paying for my sporting goods, I asked the guy behind the counter if he was a Muslim. He said, “Yes.” So I asked him what kinds of reactions he had been getting from customers and other people.

He told me he was very surprised at how concerned and kind everyone had been. They had received no threats, no anger, not even any funny looks. And he repeated how surprised he was.

As I was thinking about this conversation a bit later, I wondered why he found it surprising that he wasn’t being attacked and persecuted. Why he seemed to expect it.