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

[jobycom]

112. And a longer response...

You say Islam is in their "dark ages" because they haven't embraced secularism, which implies there is something in their religion that keeps them from advancing. Yet I'm sure you know that for many centuries Islamic cultures led the world in science, math, medicine, poetry, architecture, etc. How can that be if their lack of secularism prevents progress?

The reason so many countries that practice Islam are in such terrible economic shape is because the US and the UK have done everything in our powers to make them so. We have overthrown democracies. We have propped up bloody, violent dictatorships and trained the secret police in these dictatorships to torture and murder political dissent out of existence, and we have used military might to squash the most secular governments in the region (Iraq, for instance). We have stolen the resources from their ground that could have enriched them. As with slavery in the US, blaming the victims of horrific atrocities for their own victimization is sick.

We use a religious filter when we talk about the Middle East. We see Saudi Arabia as backward because of their religion, when in fact their religion is more of a creation of their government to keep the people in check. When we see something we don't like from those countries we say "Oh, that's because of Islam."

A clear example is honor killings. Honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. They happen in Christian countries, too. They are a result of a patriarchal culture, and are firmly condemned by every Muslim government, and denounced by Muslim leaders. But when we hear of one, we immediately blame Islam. In the US, 3 women a day are murdered by domestic partners, usually because the women didn't obey the man. These killings usually follow a clear, identifiable pattern of abuse that our legal system does nothing to interrupt. Why don't we blame democracy for that? We don't we blame secularism? For that matter, we don't even blame Christianity, though most often the killers are Christians. We don't blame democracy or secularism because the root of the problem lies elsewhere. And that's true of the supposed sins of Islam, as well.