'But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'(...) there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are precisely the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intollerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course, it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgement can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned arround. But intollerant, narow minds with no imagination, are like parasites that transform the host, change form and continue to thrive.'

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

As dificult as it would have been to deal with narrow minds on a single front, said parasites have unfortunately penetrated too close to home. As Hamza Yusuf said, when asked by a suspicious non-Muslim colleague if he was trying to convert him: I'm still trying to convert Muslims first. My appologies to anyone whose feathers are being ruffled as I type away, our reality is a Muslim world where 'Muslims' brandishing usurped ideals and theories cut from reality, are murdering innocents, because some ugly, robed ponce, called the Pope, has no sense of history, nor diplomacy. Another narrow mind. And thus evil begets evil. And we're fighting a war against ignorance with Islamaphobes and stupid people who shame a handfull of enduring sanity by calling themselves Muslims. (I'm sorry, call yourself a Muslim by all means, but do it in the privacy of your own home if that is the only way you know how.)

I don't know about the experiences of others in regards to discrimination, but for Elestkimo, discrimination was the Turkish Government, and the random 'Oi Osama!' remark she could laugh off. Nothing that could touch her...this was until recently. I allude to the Tragic Hero metaphor again, because they really do stab you when the armour comes off, where it's most sensitive (think scar tissue sensitive), and it hurts. I swear it hurts. And you feel helpless, and betrayed and misunderstood. And when you finally stop pitying yourself because what you've lost is lost and you have to move on; you know that you can't stand about and not do anything. But biggots don't get converted and stomping them out would require brute force which will achive nothing as they themselves have demonstrated already...
... perhaps we just have to try yelling louder than them.