Are you an Islamophobe?

[Mudhammam]

@Nestor

Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

I know this isn't true, but the general picture supports this idea. There's Muslims with different views but what I see the most is conservative Muslims wanting to preserve what the Quran commands. Religions are usually extremely conservative, and that ends up resulting in unresponsive stagnation. I wouldn't say they're monolithic though. It's not that there aren't liberal Muslims, but how many Muslims are liberal and secularists? It's hard to not agree with this when all we see about Islam is either (1) Terrorism (2) Muslim human rights group billing laws to ban any criticism of Islam (3) Muslims protesting against free speech and other western rights (4)Surveys revealing extremely conservative and hostile political/ideological opinions coming from Muslims (much more than Christians); for example a study I once linked here in AF said 45% of Muslim immigrants don't trust Jews

I fully agree but keep in mind that most of our impressions of Islam in the West are filtered so that we rarely hear about the progressive Muslims who do incredible work in their communities, in comparison to the fanatics who, undoubtedly, might come across differently were the power struggles less destabilized, and therefore, less abrasive in their own culture. It's also bullshit how any violence committed by Muslims is characterized as terrorism while other irrational motivations are simply filed under the typical heading of "homicide" or "rage killing." It takes a Tim McVeigh to label a white person's actions as terrorism, yet now we've come to the point that a Muslim who shoots up innocent civilians is immediately deemed a terrorist on account of his or her faith.

Islam 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's not that it doesn't have values in common, but it has a lot differing from the west and political ideologies like liberalism or democracy.

Yes but we should be careful not to overgeneralize less we lead back to the days of McCarthyism and communist hysteria which I can't imagine was ever very helpful.