Last year, Officer Thomas Christenson confronted Muslim youth in Pike Place Market offering free hugs and called one of them a racist.
Last year, Officer Thomas Christenson confronted Muslim youth in Pike Place Market offering free hugs and called one of them "a racist." SLOG TIPPER SARAH

Islamophobia is alive and well in our country — here in our state government and in Seattle. Assholes like Donald Trump have only promoted further anti-Muslim sentiment.

According to Seattle Globalist writer Ahlaam Ibraahim, this is exactly why demonstrations like Seattle-born Global Islamophobia Awareness Day are sorely needed. In its second year, participants at the event aim to debunk "popular myths about the Muslim experience and [educate] people about what the Islamic faith truly teaches."

Here's what Ibraahim took away from last year's event:

After KUOW published a piece about our event, an Islamophobic website that can no longer be found picked it up and started bashing our youth and community. They managed to get more than 1,000 hateful comments. It was scary because our faces were in the story. Here we were, a group of teenagers trying to change the world for the better being depicted as exactly what the West fears: evil Muslims promoting Jihad and terror. That was the exact reason why we held the event in the first place!

But to me, it was worth the risk, and shows that young Muslims putting themselves out there need all the support they can get. Plus, any people who attended the workshops last year had the opportunity to meet a real Muslim for the first time — not just someone they saw in on TV or in a mug shot on the news. They took the opportunity to understand the religion deeply. After the event, they wrote to us thanking us for teaching them and allowing them to see Islam and Muslims differently.

This year's event will be on Saturday, May 14 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Victor Steinbrueck Park and features conversations about women's rights in Islam and the history of Islamophobia, among other topics. More details here.