Yeah and "progressive" people (or whatever the opposite of this weeks new tendy buzzword is) are pretty good at refusing to "figure the world out" in fear of being called islamophobic or whatever, and that's how they become a corpse in a nightclub
being prejudiced against muslims isn't going to save you from being randomly shot, tho i guess you probably aren't actually making that argument since that's a ridiculous idea
and it's not so much fear of people thinking i'm an starfish as much as it is the idea of being an starfish. people manage their fears differently, people who are "islamophobic" (i don't like using x-phobic as a way to identify this kind of stuff) decide that they need to find patterns to be able to handle their fears, so they project them broadly onto whatever characteristics they feel will help them identify the fear. it's a basic psychological skill that's evolutionarily incredibly useful, but impractical these days, especially when the affected group is so large and filled exclusively with completely independent variables. do you think "progressives" honestly don't have these fears at all? of course they do, they just manage them different ways, and probably have to catch themselves so their brain doesn't learn patterns that don't exist
