Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Islamophobia and racism
Many will say that anti-Islamic sentiment is
about objection to the religion, rather than about racism, because Islam is a
religion and not a race. I used to say the same thing. But while Islam itself
is not an ethnicity, it's closely associated with brown-skinned people and
therefore Islamophobia involves a lot of racial profiling. Islamophobes tend to
have a much bigger issue with race than with the actual beliefs of extremist,
fundamentalist Islam. If they genuinely had a problem with the misogyny,
homophobia, and justification for violence that exists in the fundamentalist
sects of pretty much every religion, then they would have an equal objection to
white fundamentalist Christians who hold those same attitudes. And yes, I know
that not all Christian fundamentalists are white. Bigots usually excuse the
white ones, though, or at least grant them far more leeway.