Has anyone else noticed how "Muslim" is often used as code for "Arab", and sometime vice versa? Like, when you get someone who's open about their bigotry, they talk shit about Muslims but only seem to think of the Middle East and north Africa. But, when policies specifically designed to pander to this audience, they avoid specifying Muslims because they know about the whole legal shitstorm that would cause, so instead they target Arab countries. It's like a dogwhistle during a song, the bigots get the underlying message from the policy, but still get to turn around and go "but that's not what the lyrics say" any time they're challenged on it. They get to act like the person who calls them out is inferring things, when it's really the messenger implying things quite heavily. They get to have open biases against people from the Middle East, but when called out go "but I'm not racist - Islam isn't a race!" Even if they legitimately believe that, it's hard to work out how that could manifest itself in action in any way that wasn't overtly racist.
What are other people's thoughts on this? Anyone else noticed this kind of thing?
