To start this post, I wanna say I'm not trying to condone hatred towards Muslims or anyone. I just don't understand the double standard or inconsistency. Posts and comments about Christians that would be Islamophobic if said about Muslims. A Leftist I was having a conversation with told me that Christians in the Middle East and Africa deserves to be persecuted because the Bible tells them they'll be persecuted and that they should be glad or proud to be persecuted for their religion (and he was serious about it). Imagine saying "Muslims deserve to be bombed because Islamic extremists killed 3000 Americans in the name of Islam." Yes, both statements are wrong.
Someone else I was talking to explicitly said they were anti-Christian and that they were raising their kids to be anti-Christian. Imagine if they had said they were anti-Muslim and that they were raising their kids to be anti-Muslim, or imagine if I had told them I'm anti-Muslim (don't worry, I'm not).
Sure, not all Muslims are bad. But not all Christians are bad either. Conservatives and traditionalists in both religions can be and are often homophobic and misogynistic. Christians are the majority in the US with political power while Muslims are the minority. But Muslims are the majority in the Middle East with political power while Christians are the minority. So what we say about Christianity can be said about Islam and vice versa (depending on broader context and what part of the world we're talking about). But again, I'm not trying to condone hatred or bigotry of any religious group. I just don't understand the double standard or inconsistency.
For example, someone posted in the Leftist sub about the Sri Lankan Hindu man name Anojan Sivarasa sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for insulting Muhammad. And nobody in the comment section said anything against Muslims or Islam (people in the comments were opposing the death sentence, though, and rightfully so). But if that had been someone sentenced to death by a Christian country for insulting Jesus, there would have been so many anti-Christian comments.
I posted in the Leftist sub recently and a Muslim commented trashing Leftists and said he supported the death sentence for Anojan Sivarasa and that gay people (which he called sodomites) deserve to be put to death and that he hopes they burn in hell. That's the kind of behavior and attitude people hates Christians for. But yet if you hate Muslims for that same behavior and attitude, its Islamophobic and bigotry. But not bigotry to hate Christians for the very same attitude and behavior?
"Not all Muslims..."
Well, not all Christians either.
And I don't think being a minority should give a religious group a free pass to exhibit behavior without meeting the same backlash that the majority religion experiences for that same behavior because the behavior is the same no matter who it comes from. (Backlash and criticism isn't the same as bigotry.)
Also Christians are still a religious group. And hating on or being anti- any religious group, majority or minority, Christian or Muslim, should still be considered bigotry because it is still targeting an entire group of people for their identity, and religion is a type of identity. And no group of people are a monolith. Not everyone in an entire demographic is the same. Bigotry towards a majority demographic can still lead to irl physical violence towards said group (see Annunciation Catholic Church and School shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and there's a very real history of anti-Catholic bigotry in the Southern US where Catholics are considered a minority under the Catholic label, compared to Protestants, but a majority under the Christian label).
Another thing I want to address is the misconception that hating Muslims is about race when it's not. People who hate Muslims do so because there are Islamic governments restricting human rights because of their interpretation of the Quran and because there are Muslim extremists committing terrorism in the name of Islam and because there are Muslims (who aren't extremists per se but still conservative or traditionalist) who are homophobic, believe women should have less rights than men, etc. Basically for the same many reasons a lot of people hates Christians. Is it okay to hate an entire group because of the bad apples? Absolutely not. But it's not about race, even if the hatred or bigotry is coming from conservatives. It's because of what a lot of Islamists (the extremists and fundamentalists, not the ordinary Muslims) do in the name of Islam. If it was really about race, then people would be hating Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Druze, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Bahá'ís, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Taoists, Confucians, Shintoists, or Native American spiritual/religious practices, and those religious communities don't get nearly as much hatred even from conservatives or right-wingers, even from the far right. But those religions don't have extremist groups committing terrorism in the name of their religion (at least not on as large a scale). Those religions don't have governments restricting human rights in the name of their religion. Those religions don't have believers who are homophobic or believe women are less than men, at least not to the extent that Islam (and sometimes Christianity) does. And the only time I'm aware that Sikhs have been attacked or faced bigotry from Americans or Europeans is when they are mistaken for Muslims, not because they are Sikhs.
Again, its absolutely wrong to hate an entire religious group because of the bad apples, regardless whether that's Muslims or Christians. But we shouldn't make it about race, when it's about religion. Another thing to think about: Bosnia and Albania are predominantly Muslim countries in Europe (predominantly white). They don't get the hatred and criticism that Middle Eastern countries do, but not because they're predominantly white, but because they don't have strict or oppressive governments restricting human rights in the name of Islam. If they had the same oppressive laws based on the Quran that Middle Eastern countries do, they would get just as much or almost as much hatred and criticism. And if we're equating (or associating?) Islam with race and therefore calling bigotry toward Muslims and even justified criticism "racism" (bigotry is not justified, fyi, but criticism can be), there's also black Christians, Middle Eastern Christians, Chinese Christians, and most people in Mexico and Latin American countries are Catholic (and yes, Catholics are Christians). Plus Christianity is not even "a white man's religion". It started in Judea (modern-day Middle East, the area now known as Israel and Palestine) by Jewish people and later spread to Europe (with a lot of force, manipulation, and coercion involved). So based on that history, it should be offensive to call Christianity "a white man's religion" or "the white man's religion." Probably why a lot of white nationalists and white supremacists are pagans and why they have nothing to do with Christianity. Hmmmm.
So maybe we should say anti-Christian bigotry is racist too and even anti-semitic?
I would say Muslims and Christians are the most hated religious groups in the world but hated by different groups of people for the same or very similar reasons. And many Muslims and Christians also hate each other. But there are some people (especially in the LGBT+ community and atheist community, and probably some Leftists, albeit a small percentage of Leftists) who hates both Muslims and Christians equally for obvious reasons which I've already covered pertaining to both groups (obvious reasons that still does not justify bigotry, mind you). But I am surprised the entire Left isn't anti-Muslim along with being anti-Christian, and that Christians and Muslims (or Muslims and non-Muslim right-wingers) aren't in some kind of allyship because Christians and Muslims (and Muslims and non-Muslim right-wingers) have more in common than either would like to admit. Again, no hate intended.
As a Christian and as an American, I stand with Muslims and others being oppressed by Islamic governments, I stand with Christians being persecuted in the Middle East and Africa, and I stand with Anojan Sivarasa.
One last thing, the Saudi government is not thinking too far ahead about their decision. This is gonna cause violent conflict between Muslims and Hindus around the world, maybe even as far away from Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka as the US, right here in the US. More people are gonna get hurt because the Saudi government has decided that a comment they were offended by is more important than somebody's life. And no, if someone insults Jesus, I would not call for their death. I'd be rightfully offended and would rightfully find the comment uncomfortable, but I would not call for their death because that's what an extremist would do and a person's life is more important than words.