Religion - worst invention ever.
This article actually does a decent job of breaking into something that needs to be discussed more: not all religions are created equal, and not all forms of each religion are created equal.
When sensible people on the right and the left criticize Islam, the “progressive left” often fights back with “that’s Islamophobia”, or (the famously stupid statement of Ben Affleck) “that’s gross, that’s racist”, or “what about all the other terrible actions from other religions like the crusades, or witch burning, or the IRA and KKK”.
While these defenders are well meaning, they have likely never met a Muslim from the Middle East. And if they have, the individual is likely an immigrant that has fled oppression.
My point is twofold. First, Salafi Jihadism and Wahhabism very different from Sufi, or Shia, or even the other branches of the Sunni Islamic sects. Most people in America were brought up in Christian households. Christianity’s most popular branches in the US are Catholic and Protestant (there are others too). But those break down into dozens, or even hundreds of different denominations. Some of the denominations arose out of legitimate arguments about scripture or theology, and others arose simply around significant figures claiming to be prophets or to have a “new way to god.” In America, we need to a better job of recognizing that saying “Muslims” is just as much, if not far more, of a generalization as saying “Christians”.
Second, we need to do a better job of recognizing the difference between Muslims in democratic republics with freedom of and from religion, and Muslims in countries without these protections. Muslims in America are often and increasingly the focus of hatred and bigotry, and that is terrible and needs to stop. And that is often born out of right-wing ignorance and hate mongering toward the entirety of Muslims. But we also need to recognize that Muslims internationally hold far different views than those in the US (and back to point #1, these views may differ widely among sects). In many Mid-East, Asian Pacific, and African nations, and in some European nations, there is often broad support for Islam as the state religion, Sharia law as national law, criminal penalty or usually death to apostates, non-muslims, LGBT, etc.
But these views are a minority (though sometimes still a troublingly high percentage) in most democratic republics like the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, etc. I would argue (and I think quite persuasively) that Trump voters hold far more authoritarian and dangerous views than American Muslims, and in higher percentages (for example, half of Trump voters support allowing Trump to overrule federal judges).