In an ideal world you’re right. We should all be allowed to criticize religions as much as we want. Religion has always been the root cause of so much evil in the world.
But the thing is in the real world there is always a power imbalance. So for example there is a difference when someone affected by the religion say for example a Muslim LGBT person bringing up an issue Vs someone random in the west (where Islamophobia is rampant anyway)or some other ethnicity removed from Islam to bring up the same issues. Which is what Frank Ocean did.
No one needs saviors. There is often a mentality that we need to “save others” but this results in you only making it worse for those people who are actually suffering from the negative effects of religion.
TLDR : stay in your lane don’t talk over others. Anyway there are nuances and this won’t always be true. But it’s a case by case basis anyway.
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This is a point I’d like to elaborate on.
Islamophobia is actually a very nuanced topic.
I was born and raised in the west (Europe) and have had LGBTQ friends so I do not have some blind hatred against them.
And some of them have opened up about the fact that it is hurtful when religious people curse them, and fair enough, I‘m sure that’s the case.
But there still remains that fact that 100% of the Islamophobia that I have experienced had nothing to do with Islam‘s homophobia.
People just really hate Islam here. Some wouldn’t be even able to tell you why. Most people would refer to terrorist attacks since they don’t know anything about Islamic dogma whatsoever.
People also calling Islamophobia racism is related to the fact that it’s interlinked most of the time. If I were a normal Middle Eastern Person with very liberal views I’d still get racially profiled or receive worse grades because a teacher would assume I’m Muslim (yes i know of cases in which this happened).
And it makes it worse that Frank ocean never was one of the LGBTQ victims and still insults Islam in this way.
Because it makes the situation worse and only adds to the blind hatred that people have.
People think that Allahu Akbar is a terrorist phrase. Now they might think that it’s a curse too.
Day after day my religion is belittled by people who are not even affected by it just because they are xenophobic.
And to those people that say that the criticism is fair because the religion has controversial doctrines to them:
Where I‘m from, a devout Christian would never receive the treatment that I do, even though Christianity‘s, Islam‘s and Judaism‘s „outdated“ points are pretty much identical.
Yet Muslims are singled out every single time. It’s really frustrating and hurtful
