Islamophobia in the UK - particularly from Indians
Recently my Facebook feed has been full of Islamophobia - won't go into all the particular instances as it infuriates me but leads me to my main point.
So my local shopkeeper was talking about his job and saying how much racism he gets as a Indian/Hindu person. I sympathized and mentioned the insane amount of islamophobia I see in my Facebook feed.
To my surprise he started going on about how awful Muslims are, they deserve the hate they get, they're all violent etc. Of course having grown up with Muslim friends and neighbours I countered his points but whatever I said he was adamant pretty much every Muslim is a bad person, although his reasons were largely based on his experience when growing up in India or middle eastern countries and the more sinister practices (marrying children and that such) you sometimes hear about.
I felt incredibly uncomfortable but also aware I see and speak to this guy most days so was trying to keep it together tbh. I knew another shopkeeper there had made a throw away comment about someone with the name Mohammed before so had some inkling but this was another level.
I'm also just wondering do I need to respect that his lived experience will be so different from my own and that there are cultural differences I could just never understand and maybe "justify" his views more? I'm not sure there is any excuse for tarring all people from an entire religion with same brush though?