The shah of Iran heavily suppressed Islam as well…and It led directly to the Islamic revolution. Suppression of normal political and religious expression leads to more extremists, not less.

When i talk about Islamophobia, I think about the time when my mom was run off the road by a couple of guys in a truck yelling slurs, or the woman who was stabbed walking home from our mosque, or the bulletholes in our mosque windows, or the weekly bomb/death threats.

You wield your ethnicity like a bludgeon to “win” these types of arguments but you are quite remote from the actual experience of others who look like you.