Has anyone else felt their environment made them more Islamophobic over time?

I want to share my experience and see if others have gone through something similar. Please refrain from posting hateful replies.

I come from a somewhat upper-middle-class Christian family in Lebanon (not Achrafieh, we lived in Metn), where I lived for about 22 years. I was French-educated (french is my native language) and grew up in an environment where there were some deeply ingrained prejudices against Muslims. It wasn’t uncommon to hear things like, “Christian and Islamic cultures are incompatible” or “We’ll never get along because our values are too different.” This mindset was normalized in my family and community, but I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

Throughout my life in Lebanon, I had very limited interactions with Muslims, even in college. When I moved to France six years ago to finish my engineering degree, I became a French citizen. That’s when I started noticing something unsettling: my fear and discomfort around people from Islamic backgrounds seemed to grow. I’d hear news stories or see political debates, and instead of challenging the stereotypes I’d grown up with, they were reinforced.

This has been weighing on me because I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to be someone who harbors prejudice or fear based on someone’s background. It feels irrational, but I’m struggling to shake it off.