The Islamophobe argued that it is permissible to castigate Muslims for being Muslims in the same way that it would be permissible to castigate Nazis for being Nazis but not Jews for being Jews because Muslims are not a racial group while Jews are:

“First of all, everything I have said against Islam is directed against a CULTURE which has to be LEARNED, and not against any group of PEOPLE who have features that they are BORN WITH and cannot change.” ~ Islamophobe.

I answered:

Neither being a Muslim nor being a Jew, is based on particularities of appearance – thus if we associate ‘race’ with physical appearance then neither being Jewish nor being Muslim can be considered belonging to a ‘racial’ group. The term ethnicity is wider than ‘race’ in its sense of physical appearance, wide enough to be applied to both Muslims and Jews. Just as there are Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews there are Arab, Bengali and Punjabi Muslims – these being the largest heritage groups confessing to, respectively, Judaism and Islam. Too, there are denominational or sectarian distinctions within the confessions that cut across the cultural differences.

While a white person qua white or a black person qua black cannot change the physical features that define them as such, they are, absent the prejudices of others, free to be whatever they choose to be. Counterintuitively, perhaps, it is much harder (psychologically not necessarily societally) to break away from the determinations of our religio-cultural affiliations, ethnicities if you like, than from those of appearance. The philosopher and educator Ninian Smart identified what he called the ‘seven dimensions of religion’ and what I suggest might be better called the ‘seven dimensions of religio-cultural ethnicity’.

The Seven Dimensions:

Ritual: Forms and orders of ceremonies (private and/or public) (often regarded as revealed)

Narrative and Mythic: stories (often regarded as revealed) that work on several levels. Sometimes narratives fit together into a fairly complete and systematic interpretation of the universe and human’s place in it.

Experiential and emotional: dread, guilt, awe, mystery, devotion, liberation, ecstasy, inner peace, bliss (private)

Social and Institutional: belief system is shared and attitudes practiced by a group. Often rules for identifying community membership and participation (public)

Ethical and legal: Rules about human behavior (often regarded as revealed from supernatural realm)

Doctrinal and philosophical: systematic formulation of religious teachings in an intellectually coherent form

Material: ordinary objects or places that symbolize or manifest the sacred or supernatural

I would say that these dimensions are common to both the Muslim and Judaic faiths and equally distinguish both from political movements such as Nazism. Further, despite present and historical atrociousness and absurdities in their doctrines and practice, both of these religions alongside all religions have inspired much compassion, consciousness, conscience and creativity in many of their adherents throughout history.

In addition to this religio-cultural aspect there is also the fact that the great religions are what we can consider, following Samuel Huntington’s suggestion, civilisational cultures. I’ve seen varying graphical representation of Huntington’s thesis and attach one of these to illustrate that thesis. There are comments I could make about it but I don’t want to distract from the central point, that we can draw from both Smart and Huntington, that Islam, Judaism and the other great religions represent memetic heritages at least as integral to the sense of being of individuals as their genetics. Islamophobia must be understood to be as harmful to a person’s sense of being as would be any denigration (I use the word consciously) founded on genetically determined variations in appearance. For these reasons while it is within the bounds of respect to criticise certain aspects of Islam or Judaism it is not within the bounds of respect or reason to attack wholesale either or any of the major religions. Similarly while we may properly, and must properly, condemn bad actors and believers regardless of their religion, we must not paint those who are innocent as bad actors and belivers simply because they have in common an ethno-cultural-civilisational heritage shared with millions and billions of other human beings. That’s not respectful, reasonable or right.