Growing up I was taught that homosexuality was bad. Not by my family, but by society. I took an extreme stance on homosexuality and internalized it in a very detrimental way. To keep people from knowing about my "secret", I became a gang member. I was known for being ruthless to others. Early 2009, I was arrested and sent to serve time with the State of Georgia. I remember asking the prison Imam about homosexuality, who told me that the only difference of opinion in traditional Sunni law was the manner in which the homosexual was to be executed. During Pride in Atlanta, I was told about an organization that changed my life forever.

What do I mean by "self-created fear of Islamophobia"? Do I dare to say that Islamophobia actually doesn't exist at all? Yep, it didn't exist but some of our Islamic centres created the term and spread it around through their actions.

The shooting of the young Pakistani activist shows one thing: Fanatics are cowards who resort to violence to silence their critics. Malala Yousufzai was shot and seriously wounded on Tuesday as she was leaving her school in her hometown. It is sad and shameful to see these thugs committing horrific crimes against humanity in the name of religion. Doing their dirty work in the name of the faith is a great insult to those who follow the faith and to the faith itself.

Journalist Doug Sanders, whose latest book The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten The West? tackles (and pretty much straightens out) the laundry-list of misconceptions and falsehoods that has made its way from the fringe to the forefront of the public domain about Muslim immigration and the West. In this interview, he goes in-depth on the larger issues.

The stakes here are high. The Muslim-tide beliefs have already become the founding myth behind several alarming political movements and the cause of one notable act of terrorism. Promoting these myths about Muslim immigrants has become a significant mainstream theme in global electoral politics with scarcely any proper fact checking of the underlying claims. It is vitally important to separate the real problems with Muslim immigration from those that are manufactured out of fear and bad information.

Multiculturalism has veered off course when those responsible for our safety -- a major threat to which is Islamist terrorism -- are reluctant to use direct language to describe that threat. Law enforcement officials must be properly and candidly briefed on the role of religious ideology in some strains of terrorism.

I am a Canadian Muslim woman and have had the privilege of calling Canada my home since 1984. I strongly believe that as a Muslim I have every right to question my faith, to arrive at my own unique understanding of it, and to practice it according to my very own sensibilities as a unique human being. For that I am grateful to my adoptive country, Canada.

Today is the 543rd birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of the Sikh faith and one of the greatest symbols of pluralism and tolerance in the world.

Bruce Crumley writes in Time magazine: "In a free society, a newspaper can ridicule and stigmatize whomever (sic) it chooses, except those who demonstrate a willingness to respond with violence." Self-censorship is the order of the day -- something not unknown in the Canadian media when it comes to Islamic extremists.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau chided the Conservative government for calling honour killings "barbaric." But why such reluctance to call these heinous crimes using terminology that best describes them? Is it fear of stigmatizing a particular culture or religious community? Is it simply naivete of the worst kind?

The Paris offices of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo were firebombed Wednesday, the same day the magazine released an issue caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad on its cover. This is not the first time that Charlie Hebdo's content has angered Muslims.

Child or adult femalicide (yes, it's a real word) of this nature is among the pre-Islamic practices that are expressly prohibited, lacking honour completely and subject to findings of guilt by God. As for judgement in a court of law, well -- the case continues...

After 9/11, I didn't want people to think I was Muslim. "They" were going to make my life harder for something "we" never had a hand in. "They" were the ones responsible and I wanted nothing to do with it. Being referred to as Muslim quickly changed from a harmless mistake to a black mark.

In the Toronto 18 case in which I testified five times over four years, it was clear that had there been no such legislation, the offences that the Superior Court found to be criminal would probably not have been denounced as required.