I'm pretty much in agreement with Paul Burke on this one, dianavan.

Race is a construct of the human mind. As a concept it really has no basis in reality.

However, that doesn't prevent people from practicing discrimination against others based on perceived differences.

So why do we have a word to define prejudice and discrimination against people with what we consider to be biological differences, and we have a special word to define prejudice and discrimination against the people of only one religion, both of which carry a large social stigma for those who practice these forms of prejudice and descrimination, but we have none for this one category of people (Muslims), that carries no social stigma at all when it is practiced?

That in itself is racist (which I would argue is being practiced whenever a group of people is being treated as if they belonged to a separate race, regardless of whether or not they actually do).

Our society has created a category of people who are being robbed of their humanity in every possible way. They can be imprisoned under a special category created just for them ("enemy combatant") that isn't entitled to any of the legal protections that the rest of us enjoy. They can be discriminated against in every possible way and there is no social stigma whatever for those who practice this discrimination, and there is no word that carries any social stigma to describe those who practice this discrimination. That in itself is racism because it treats them as if they were a separate race, regardless of whether or not they actually are.

And since we agree that there really is no such thing as "race", even racism against people who are percieved to be biologically a different race falls into that same category... people being treated as if they belonged to a different race (but don't really, because there is no such thing as "race"). Why would you deny only one group of people the right to have the protections offered by a word like "racism", dianavan? It seems to me that it is your approach that is racist, not mine.