Muslims around the world have grown accustomed to defending themselves every time a biased news anchor or point-scoring politician tries to pin a senseless terrorist attack or heinous crime on their faith.
In turn, the Internet has grown accustomed to a constant stream of frustrated tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos screaming "they are not us".
So it came as a surprise that in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, a new stream of tweets perpetrating many of the common misunderstandings about Muslims and their religion came not from non-Muslims, but ex-Muslims, Muslims who chose to leave their faith.
The hashtag #ExMuslimBecause was recently launched by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain to encourage ex-Muslims to share why they chose to leave their faith, saying they wanted to defend people's right to leave Islam and criticize it without fear.
It wasn't long before the hashtag started widely trending on Twitter as thousands of ex-Muslims started explaining in 140 characters or less why they gave up on their religion.
While the purpose of this online campaign might have been to provide a space for ex-Muslims to openly talk about their right to leave their faith without being harassed, it unfortunately turned into yet another platform where grossly inaccurate understandings of Muslims and Islam run amok.
Most of these tweets did not center on the rational or science-based approaches to giving up on faith that atheists often adopt and that one would expect from someone who has decided to leave a religion.
These are a few examples of the many tweets that were respectful:
However, many other tweets were instead using arguments that leaned toward Islamophobic beliefs based on the misinterpretations of Islam, not what the religion actually encompasses.
One ex-Muslim says she gave up on Islam because of her mother's intolerance of different beliefs, which begs the question: Is intolerance inherent to Islam or just her mother's interpretation of it?
Another says her reason is believing in the value of critical thinking, but are passive thinking and blind belief inherent to all Muslims and Islam or just the stereotypical misrepresentations of them?
Another references the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks to clarify his reason, which begs perhaps the most important question to arise from this hashtag: When did extremism become synonymous with Islam?
They have the right to leave their religion for the reasons they see fit, but when those reasons are based on stereotypical generalizations and misunderstandings, it has consequences for the millions of Muslims out there who have nothing to do with either of them.
If most of these ex-Muslims have decided to stop following Islam based on the beliefs and actions of those who misunderstand, misuse and misrepresent it, that sends a strong message to the people who don't know much about Islam and it is this: Islamophobia is acceptable.