General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Just to beat my head against a wall one more time, yes, bigotry against Islam is racism. [View all]jobycom
(49,038 posts)I'm saying that "race" is any grouping of a people that you can come up with based on deeply seated characteristics of those people. It can be skin color (black, white--which are also arbitrary groupings, as I said in my post), nationality (Indonesian, Arab), language (Arabic, Spanish), or cultural (Jewish, Islamic). All that is required is for the characteristic to define a large, vertical (meaning all "classes," as opposed to something like hatred of the poor), and for the people holding the opinions to have power to oppress. So, Christians, for instance, in the US and Western countries, couldn't be victims of racism. Christians in non-Christian nations who have a shared ethnic and cultural background, like Coptic Christians in Egypt or Maronit Christians in Lebanon can be.
I don't know that translates into you saying Islam defining Indonesian identity. A person in the US, for instance, can be a black Muslim from Argentina, and face racism because of their skin color, religion, and/or country of origin, without those three factors being equated.