I am urging all of you to check out the photo below. I was working at the store today and I was handed this dollar bill. Yep – that’s right. “No Muslim Immigrants in the USA.” Cold-blooded and bigoted. Whoever stamped this note should be very ashamed of themselves. I can’t believe it! I didn’t even want to touch the note, let alone process it through the cash register and potentially hand this piece of racist propaganda to a customer!It led me to think about Islamophobia in the US. Has it always been here? When I pondered more, I discovered that hate crimes associated with both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have shown an increase in recent years. American antagonism towards Islamic and Jewish traditions goes back nearly 500 years. From time to time, Muslims and Jews have both been viewed as antithetical to certain ideas of American-ness.My personal opinion is that anti-Muslim sentiment is often not associated with religion at all. It is driven by personal and national politics. It is influenced by the media. It is rarely due to conflicting religious views. Islamophobia is not due to a clash of religious beliefs. Political factors are imperative.