generalisation!.

for my first project week i went to Ahmedabad to work with an organisation called Himmat.we did not work there but went to a place called Ekta nagar where all the muslim victims of the Gujurat riots lived. for the first few days i did a small research with two of my friends. we were told about how the Hindus attacked and how they killed innocent muslims.
after i got back from this project week i realized how people generalize things based on one event. this applies for terrorists. just because the terrorists are known to be muslims, people generalize that all muslims are bad and are terrorists based on some incidents. it's like an easy way out to address people.
i read this quote from The Forgotten Half of Change by Luc de Brabandere,which stated
“Every prejudice is like a pair of spectacles with deforming lenses or like directional loudspeakers. They make us shortsighted or hard of hearing.”
so forming prejudices is like wearing blinders. it makes you short sighted and does not let you look beyond.
i think one should be open minded and should accept things that come in thier way without forming any prejudices. people formed a preconceived notion about the muslims. this might prevent their interaction with them. and one forms these notions based on generalizations made by people earlier. hence, before generalizing or forming prejudices we must look into the situation and then form an opinion.