I continue to wonder why progressives are so protective of Islam

[WhiteAndNerdy]

200. Condemning Islam is not the same thing as condemning Muslims.

Also, just for the record -- I am not an atheist and I do not want to see religion disappear. I would like to see people liberated from harmful ideologies of all kinds, whether religious or political or some other kind. Unlike the kind of atheist who would like to see all religion abolished, I believe that it is possible to have healthy religions (and other kinds of ideologies) -- I am religious myself and I believe my religion is healthy for me and would be healthy for society if it were practiced on a large scale.

No one suffers more from Islam than Muslims do. If I hated them as people, I wouldn't care about their suffering, but I do care. My problem is with the belief system and the culture it engenders, not with the believers, especially because most have been raised in the faith and never had much of a choice about whether to believe in it. I feel the same way about children raised in fundamentalist forms of Christianity because I was raised that way and I know first-hand the harm it does. That doesn't even come close to hating people who were raised in those harmful variants of Christianity -- quite the contrary.