To be pissed off at the Muslim community?

[Redolent]

The vast majority of my Muslim neighbours and family members have had visitors over for Eid. Not just one household, but a steady stream of them. My mum, who’s vulnerable and has pretty much kept to herself over the last couple of months, has mixed with four different households since Sunday. Her response is ‘Well they turned up/travelled to say Eid Mubarak. They’re right on our doorstep. I couldn’t possibly turn them away without serving them food’.

Media accounts of how Muslim communities life in extended family networks miss the point that these ties are not simply dependent on proximity but are based on entrenched feelings of social obligation.

Bearing in mind that the BAME community is more at risk anyway, I’m pissed off at the Muslims I know, fearful of a second spike, and hoping that the cites they live in get locked the fuck down again before they all get sick.

OP, it sounds as though your mother and her friends are motivated more by manners rather than by religion. They would consider it rude not to visit her and she would consider it rude not to invite them in. If they were thinking about religion they would have stayed away because the preservation of life is a compulsory act, while visiting people on Eid is a meritorious act. In Islamic law the former must always take precedence over the latter.

Over the last few weeks the government have made it blatantly obvious that there are no hard and fast rules and that everything is just a suggestion, for guidance.

@UmmH not it absolutely is not. Yes racism may sometimes take the form of iskamaphobic comments but that doesn’t make actual islamaphobia racism. It’s deeply offensive to those of us who have left the religion to conflate the two. Islam is a choice, race is not. It totally erases our lives experiences and the toxic treatment of apostates within some religious communities. Statements like yours are a part of apostate erasure.

@CovidicusRex

I have explained the overlap very clearly and that Islamophobia isn't about one's religious beliefs because it is experienced by both believers and non-believers by virtue of their ethnicities or perceived ethno-cultural affiliations. It is also the definition adopted by equalities legislation.

John Charles de Menezez was killed because of Islamophobic racism. He was a non-Muslim Brazilian man but to the officers trailing him he was an (unarmed) Middle Eastern looking man 'with Mongolian eyes' and therefore an Islamic terrorist. No one cares if you're Muslim or not in a shoot first ask questions later scenario.

Racism isn't about your identity it's about what the perpetrator perceives you to be. I was once invited to a Jewish gathering. If the event had been targeted by anti-Semites, I would have become a victim of anti-Semitic racism even though I am not Jewish, not to mention the fact that the majority of Jews in that gathering weren't believers either, meaning their Jewishness was not linked to religious beliefs.

Disagreeing with Islam is not the current definition of Islamophobia, but discriminating against someone based on their being perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be Muslim is both Islamophobic and racist.

@UmmH ok, but if someone looks at you and assumes you’re Muslim that’s racism. If you are Muslim and people assume certain things about you by virtue of your Muslimness that’s islamaphobia. Like I said, I acknowledge that anti-Muslim sentiment can fuel racism but likewise telling someone they they look Muslim is racist in itself even in the absence of any anti-Islamic feeling. And conflating negative prescriptions based on looks with negative perceptions based on religious views is categorically not the same thing. The racist view isn’t that Muslims are x, it’s the assumption that someone is Muslim based on their appearance or ethnicity. That in itself is really really insult, especially to apostates.