It is sometimes argued that as Islam is a religion, then Muslims are not a race, therefore prejudice against Muslims cannot be racism. This is true in a very literal sense. However, for the purposes of the comparison between the 1983 and the 2017 statistics, the bigotry and prejudice against a specific group of people often resembles racism very closely, even though they might not be categorised as a traditionally defined race. Similarly, prejudice against the people of a specific country – for example, Romanians – is effectively an equivalent form of cultural racism.
