I completely empathise with you and apologize about the experience, but at the same time, I would like to add that probably they were not fanatic about accepting Muslims as their neighbours. Its their experience with other fanatic muslims and the intolerance of Muslims, that they dislike. The problem being, if One Muslim is tolerant and understanding, there will be others, who will come up and try and force him to be intolerant in the name of Islam. Their Logic is simple, BEING CAUTIOUS IS BETTER THAN BEING SORRY. I dont blame them for that. I dont know you, but the way your column is written, I feel that you belong to that rare, educated, progressive Muslim, who is believes in LIVE and LET LIVE, theory. But as they say, I CRIMINAL changed the society. Because of somebody else's crime, the good people suffer. I would request you to be tolerant and slowly slowly, people will accept you in the mainstream. The key words are TOLERANCE & UNDERSTANDING. Your column was good, but it had a flaw, it was intolerant. You could have tried to understand the reason, for what happened by recalling the facts, by analysing their side and your side, it would have helped.
