There’s over 1 billion Muslims in the world – and with recent terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels, many feel discriminated against.

“Every time you turn on the news and there’s breaking news, the first gut reaction is ‘please let it not be a Muslim,'” said Khurram Ahmad, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Oshkosh. “One in 10 people have never met a Muslim. So if your only view of a Muslim is what you hear in the news and especially after a given terrorist attack, you’re going to form a negative opinion about it.”

Ahmad says that’s just what a lot of Americans have done, and he says it’s unfair. He adds Islam means ‘Religion of Peace.’

“There’s a lot of turmoil in the world that is feeding this. We happen to be living in the age where these atrocities are being committed in the name of our religion,” said Ahmad

Other Muslims add that the terrorists don’t have it right either.

“No religion – including Islam – says go and kill people. Whether they be Muslims, believers or non-believers. It’s not up for us to decide,” said Muhammad Mahmood, a Green Bay resident.

“You can not have a short cut to heaven by blowing yourself up,” added Ahmad. “it just can not simply work that way. Islam doesn’t offer any shortcuts, that’s why you have to pray five times a day.”

Statements made in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign have not helped foster much understanding after he called for “a total and complete shutdown of M uslims entering the United States.”

“If you start to have any of those tests, where does that stop? You say people can not come in and then tomorrow people can not be in the military. Where do you stop if you have a religious test on anything?” said Ahmad.

But despite what’s happening in the rest of the world – in northeast Wisconsin – Muslims say they feel accepted.

“If there’s a place to pick to live, I would pick Wisconsin as a Muslim,” said Ahmad.

“I have not found one person who discriminated against me,” added Mahmood.

“It gives some pride in the fellow Wisconsinites here that they do have that sense of ‘midwest-nice’ and welcomeness in this part of the country,” said Professor David Coury who teaches Humanistic Studies at UW-Green Bay.

Coury says a lot of what non-Muslims think just comes from fear.

“We need to overcome that fear – and the best way to do that is to get to know people, get to know our neighbors, get to know people in the Muslim community. Then you find out they are just like we are,” said Coury.

“If they could just forget the religion for a moment and they could just see that that’s a person who might have a different skin color, might have a different language but still the same human being – same eyes, same face, same hands, same body – and we do exactly the same things,” added Mahmood.