Criticizing Islam is racist?

[Thumpalumpacus]

... about behavior, not people, and therefore no exclusion follows.

I imagine he put the conditional "about any group" in there for a reason.

It does apply to a group of people.

It applies to any people who are willing to make a blanket statement about any group.

... said the guy who wrote:

I ultimately will still regard them as being accountable for their own personal choice [...]

If someone chooses to be a bigot, that's their own business. That's their right. They do not have the right to be free of criticism, and when they're being bigoted, they should be called on it. Criticizing them is one way of holding them accountable.

Not everyone who criticizes any religion is a bigot against that religion. But if you overgeneralize from a small sample ("all Catholics are child molesters", or "all Muslims are jihadis"), then you're engaging in sloppy thinking at the very least. If you target the same group in multiple generalizations absent solid support, then bigotry is the apt word.

Why you are so eager to defend fallacious thinking is beyond me.

All pedophiles are sick;
even the pedos who contain their impulses and never actually touch a child.


There.

That's a blanket statement about a group of people.

Am I a bigot for that?

Your refusal to distinguish between the ideology of Islam, and the fact that the majority of Muslims do not adhere to the most obnoxious precepts -- they cherry-pick the Quran, you know -- means that you might be. I don't know you well enough to assess completely.

I implicitly distrust people who show themselves incapable or unwilling to engage in nuanced thinking. Is that you? I don't know.

If the shoe fits, wear it. But don't complain for being "held accountable" when you do something silly like broad-brush groups of people.

As for pedophiles, according to DSM-V, it is indeed a mental disorder, so I wouldn't say you're being bigoted against them, merely restating a fact. Now, using Abaris's example earlier ("I could say, I can't stand biking on the sidewalk. But if I say, all cyclists are thugs and killers, always biking on the sidewalk, the whole argument is taken to a different level"), clearly what he's getting at is not that direct commentary of the core qualities of a group is bigotry, but the extension of unwarranted assumptions to the entire group based on a small subset of them.