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This makes perfect sense to intelligent people. Since racial identity is arbitrary, it cannot be deterministic. Without determinism, there can be no science. Therefore, neither racism nor the study of race has anything factual to offer. In addition to being a false science, racism is morally wrong because it is the foundation for racial discrimination, in which different rules and standards are applied to individuals based on their presumed identity. In the past, people suffered tremendously (and unfairly, of course) because of this. Thus, the artificial system of race serves no positive purpose. Lending legitimacy to the flawed theory of racial distinction leads, almost inevitably, to racism and the justification of racial discrimination. This, along with the inherent absurdity of even classifying people by race, should be enough to merit junking racial identification altogether.
dismissed out of hand as racism, thus effectively protecting the religion from tough examination. But everything is not as it seems. If Muslims are a race because of Islam, then it means that Islam is a racial ideology. Therefore, what this ideology has to say about its own and other races becomes very important. In fact, the Quran posits an enormous qualitative distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims that is hard to miss. Believers are loved by God, whereas infidels are hated to the extent that they are tortured for eternity (3:32, 4:56) merely for not believing. Muslims are told to shun unbelievers (3:118), who are called helpers of evil (25:55), wicked (4:160), fond of lies (5:42) and compared to the worst of animals (8:55, 7:176, 7:179). Members of Islam are told to be merciful to each other, but ruthless to those outside of the faith (48:29). Violence is also sanctioned against those who are obstinate against Islamic rule (8:12-13, 9:5). If Islam is a race, then Christianity and Judaism are races as well, meaning that if the Quran speaks of them as inferior, then it is a racist book. In truth, the Quran does more than that. In a stunning burst of religious bigotry, Muslims are ordered to fight Jews and Christians "until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (9:29). There is no basis in the text for bringing Jew and Christians under the heel of Islamic rule except by virtue of their religion. No other religion filters perception through group identity to the extent that Islam does. Around the world Christians, Jews and other individuals are routinely brutalized merely because they are a member of a non-Muslim group, not because they have done anything to personally deserve having their lives taken, their children maimed or their property torched. Meanwhile, other Muslims are generally indifferent to this violence and reserve their true outrage for circumstances involving Muslim victims of non-Muslim acts, however unintentional or relatively slight. So, if Muslims are a race, Islam would not only be a racist ideology, but arguably the most hateful and destructive in history. It is bad enough that hundreds of millions of people have been killed in the last fourteen centuries by divinely sanctioned Jihad and slavery, but to retroactively supplant the stated motive of religious supremacy with that of racial superiority is hardly a step in the right direction for a religion seeking the acceptance of an increasingly skeptical audience.
Conclusion
Race is an arbitrary label that has no legitimacy. Therefore anything based on race, including racism and racial discrimination is unsound at best and immoral and inhumane at worst. Human beings are individuals and should only be judged as such. Islam is not a race. Muslims are not a race. Islam is an ideology that should be open to critical examination. Muslims, however, are individuals who should be protected from harm or harassment in the same way and for the same reasons as anyone else.