I feel sick to my stomach.

Right after Donald Trump released a statement calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” the phone rang and it was my mother. Over the phone, she pleaded with me to stop writing about Islam and being public with my Muslim identity. I can hear the worry in her voice — the pleading comes from a place of concern for my safety, and sadly, it isn't the first time we've had this conversation.

I’m used to my mother trying to dissuade me form writing about Islam and my Muslim identity because she feels as if it'll diminish my chances of getting full-time employment. However, this time the pain in her voice reveals something more. There's a gut-wrenching fear in it, and while the sound makes me cry, I can’t help but also feel equally as pained at how our society has come to treat Muslims.

To back up his ill-informed statement, Trump reiterated false statistics, about people in the U.S. who support global jihad against Americans, collected by the infamous anti-Muslim group, Center for Security Policy, and its founder Frank Gaffney.

Trump's opinion was broadcast on nearly all major cable news stations, and while he isn't president — and hopefully never will be — there's still a large percentage of people who support him and his ideas. When he made these remarks at a South Carolina rally, for example, he wasn't met with boos, but rather a standing ovation.

According to research done by the Public Religion Research Institute, 56% of Americans believe that Islam is "at odds" with American values. I’m also willing to predict that Trump's polls will rise after this stunt at the expense of 1.6 billion Muslims around the world. In fact, while most of his competitors condemned Trump's ideas, their alternative policies aren't any less discriminatory. Rand Paul, who I'm ashamed to say I interned for, speaks of halting all immigrants from Middle Eastern countries. Governor Chris Christie has advocated for aggressive counterterrorism policies. These policies, in other words, have come to demonize and criminalize an entire religion of people. Sound familiar?

It’s exactly this type of rhetoric from some of our political leaders and members of the press that allow for ridiculous policy proposals like the one Trump suggested yesterday. These types of proclamations are ultimately destructive to our society because they foster an "us versus them" mentality, and motivate bigots to commit anti-Muslim acts such as families being slaughtered and Mosques being vandalized. In the past, they also allowed the government to put innocent Muslims in prison without due process for years with little oversight.