Just to beat my head against a wall one more time, yes, bigotry against Islam is racism.

[jobycom]

94. See, that post demonstrates exactly why it is racism in all it's sickened ugliness.

"Maher correctly observed that some Muslims are afraid to leave their religion and are even "afraid to speak out because 's the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.""

That's not true. That's a generalization based on outliers that groups all Muslims together under one single identity and paints them as either perpetrators or victims of irrational violence. That's racism. How else do you define racism?

Claiming a person has to convert to not be part of all the nasty ideas that their religion supposedly has is like saying a person has to become straight to be free of all the hatred of gays, or a person needs to pull up their pants and learn "proper English" to avoid hatred of black people.

A Muslim, like a Christian or Buddhist or atheist, can believe anything and still be Muslim. I know Muslims who think God is more of a metaphorical abstract than a real being. I know Muslims who don't even care if there is a God, who just go along with the religious practices around them because that's what their culture expects. Islam is not defined by belief alone, just like Christianity or atheism, etc. It is defined by culture, history, family, etc.

So hatred of Muslims, or to be more precise about what I'm saying, generalizations about Muslims based on assumed traits--as Maher did in the quote above--isn't about religion. It's not about belief. Muslims aren't united in what they believe, not even in their beliefs about God. So what are these generalized negative assumptions based on? Not belief, because there is no one set of beliefs which unite Muslims. So what unites them in Bill Maher's hatred? Culture, ethnic background, history... those are race. That's racism.

Repeating what I wrote in the OP, I'm not saying that disagreeing with Islam is Islamophobic. I'm not saying that condemning the fatwa against Salmon Rushdie is Islamophobic. I'm saying that Bill Maher's comment that Islam is like the mafia and will kill you if you say the wrong thing is Islamophobic, because it is an untrue generalization based on stereotypes of an entire people.