Whilst you may consider my post before as defensive and acidic, I was simply pointing out that Exit hadn't bothered to read the discussions earlier and had jumped to the conclusion that this part of the thread (and possibly others) had overstepped the mark and had become racist.
There are 37 pages, and we can't expect people to actually read all of them before posting in since half of it is mindless garbage or repeated stuff. Also, time.
As far as I can tell, Exit's post neither stated that this part of the thread was racist, or that the people posting was racist. It seems to me that it was a general comment on Islamophobia.
With regards to terrorists incidents influencing public opinion, could you point out any terrorist incident by any group that had the scale and effect that the twin towers being brought down had?What would we be discussing now if that incident had been caused by the IRA or ETA? Would America have looked again at Irish immigrants or in the case of ETA, would there have been a nervous reaction to the Hispanic community?
Are we set on playing hypothetical parlour games? Yes, the scale of the attacks has definitely caused it to stand out amongst other acts of terror, but by doing so, it has released a wholly exponential and irrational fear of Muslims, as though it instantly drove in a stereotype of Muslims being suicide bombers overnight.
Yes, I made a bad point with the Irish/Christian example, so take that out of the equation, sorry. But that doesn't mean current views of many on Muslims is stereotypical and discriminatory.
Even without the point of scale of attack and such, it has been blown way out of proportion, with fears of Muslims at decades high. Islamophobia is a social phenomenon that just reflects the stereotypical and hysterical nature of people, and it is discriminatory, and it has led to more Muslim hating/baiting and discrimination overall.
There are eight signs of Islamophobia that we are seeing increasingly:
-Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
-It is seen as separate and "other." It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
-It is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
-It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.
-It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
-Criticisms made of "the West" by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
-Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
-Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal.
Tell me that you didn't hear any of those stereotypes in recent years. Tell me that those are in no way discriminatory?