Of course, when stuff like a person's name, or the religion of a parent, is seen as the decoding factor, with religion being seen as some kind of biological inheritance, rather than as a matter of individual religious affiliation, the term "racism" can be appropriate enough.

I think that religion often can have a genetic implication in peoples' minds as well. In the case of the Muslim religion, I think a lot of people see it as being "not European" (not really "white"), and I tend to suspect that this is why it's so easy for Western societies to think it's ok to treat Muslims and Muslim countries as though they are inherently inferior - which, I would suggest, is the reason Western governments feel perfectly justified in adopting a colonialist stance in their relationship to those peoples and countries, and feeling like it is perfectly ok to subjugate their people and steal their resources.