In 1941 Dr. Seuss sent a message that, sadly, hasn’t lost its meaning.

[onager]

43. I had a recent Muslim sighting here in East Jesus myself.

Mom, dad and toddler-sized girl in a store. Mom was wearing the hijab, which sort of gave away the whole thing.

I saw Muslims all the time in Los Angeles. There was an Islamic Center close to my house. But I haven't seen many since moving back here to the South. The local university has an Islamic group, which just sent out LTTEs to all the local papers expressing their shock and horror over the Paris attacks and ISIS in general.

I always like to use my 10 or so words of Arabic when I run into Muslims.

"Marhaba" is a good one, since it means "welcome." It's also an informal greeting, like "hi" or "howdy."

In this case I told them their kid was cute, using the word "gamela" ("beautiful," with the masculine version being "gamel" since Arabic is a gendered language.) Tricky because that word is very close to one of the 27 or so Arabic words for "camel." So I could have been telling them their kid looked like a camel, which probably wouldn't go over very well. Anyway they were very friendly and we talked for a few minutes.