Calling me an Islamist goes to show what you know. Criticism of the social backwardness of West, South, and Central Asian countries is absolutely not Islamophobic at all. Trying to conflate every social failing in those countries with the existence of Islam, however, is. Furthermore, extrapolating from that conflation that all Muslims are naturally worthy of distrust, suspicion, or harsher treatment in the eyes of the law is no less than bigotry. In order to see how this is linked to racism, simply reread my posts over and over again until you get it.
Implying that I am a racist goes to show what you don't know. The only problem with that statement being that I never said that, ever. In order to see that I never actually said what you put in my mouth ("all Muslims are naturally worthy of distrust, suspicion, or harsher treatment in the eyes of the law") simply re-read all my posts over and over again until you finally get it. Then apologize for making up stuff.
When did I ever talk about you, ATW? You are projecting very heavily right now. I think after all your time on this board you've developed a bit of a persecutory delusion. Though I do find it rather amusing that you have internalized accusations of racism so much that the minute someone brings it up you automatically assume it's in reference to you.
Ah, I get it now. This thread was originally made in direct reference to ATW. Well, ATW, I can assure you that my post didn't have anything to do with your beef with OP, I was simply speaking generally and expressing my dislike for when people try to hide their racism behind thinly veiled statements like "Islam isn't a race".
Yes, how could I not think you were referring to me? Took you a bit long to get that. And I think you are totally wrong about this. Any religion and ideology must be subject to tough criticism and questioning - especially when people are murdering scores of people in its name. Just because the majority of followers of an ideology have a certain skin color does not make it "racist" to criticize the ideology.
Muslim is not a race, so no it's not racist. If you showed state charts of watermelon popularity and black population, that would be racist
Why are you so incapable of holding two different ideas in your head at the same time? Is it possible to criticize Islam without being racist or Islamophobic? Yes. Is it possible to criticize Islam out of a racialized perspective of it that also leads to a racially motivated hatred of Islam and Muslims? Yes. I simply posit that there are a lot more people in that latter group than the former group suspects, and what I find deplorable is that people who can be categorized as the latter are desperately trying to characterize themselves as the former in an attempt to obfuscate their racism. This is one of the reasons why it is so impossible to have an open and reasonable discussion about Islam. Not only because there are people who will yell "Racist!" every time someone criticizes Islam, but because there oftentimes are racists involved in these discussions that undermine the validity of criticisms towards the religion.
I can agree with that. Your previous posts, however, made it sound like any criticism of Islam is racist.
I never once talked about criticism until you made it about that. I only talked about hatred and generalizations. Reread my posts. I am having trouble understanding how you could have derived what you posted above without having projected a great deal into my posts in the first place.
Since you only just realized the purpose and direction of the OP that started the thread, I can see how you are having that trouble. But you posted in his thread, in response to something that was clearly directed at one specific poster (me). So it seemed logical that you were posting under the same general premise, since you were placing your posts in a thread that started with the OP.
This isn't about skin color at all. If someone says Christians are stupid, that's still pejorative and the equivalent of being prejudice. You can't delink religion from prejudice. Attacking Islam might not be technically racist, but it is still prejudist. And there is a difference between criticizing and prejudice. When you try to insinuate that terrorism acts in America are related to Mosques, you are going beyond criticizing a religion. In fact, the very notion that you call Islam an ideology and not a religion is revealing.
From the very start I made it very clear what the topic I was discussing was about: People trying to claim that their hatred of Islam and Muslims is never racially motivated, simply because "Islam isn't a race". My post wasn't even related to the OP's post. It was a general comment directed to everybody.
You're affixing and projecting that phenotype in place of the actual complaints about terrorism and regressive gender policies committed by people who use Islamic dogma as a pretext. Nobody says hairy brown men harbor violent, primitive values, they say Muslims do.
Aside from the fact that the assertion you just made would be wildly bigoted in of itself, the point I'm making is what do they think of when they think "Muslim"? Muslims? Muslims? Muslims? Or perhaps...
If I had said all Muslims it would be religiously intolerant, but not racist. You posting pictures of people who may or may not be Muslim (can't really tell considering your dreadful non-Islamic examples in the first post) does not empower you to divine the visual perception of those complaining about behavioral traits of a group they are not referring to aesthetically.
