Islam is not a race, not an ethnicity - Salt Lake American Muslim SLAAM

Islam is not a race and not an ethnicity - response to a page by the group Salt Lake American Muslim:

The page at http://www.saltlakeamericanmuslim.com/#!our-story has the following statement:

"In an effort to curb current tension experienced between Muslims and non-Muslims globally, which is similar to that faced historically by Native Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans, Hispanic Americans and now Muslim Americans - Salt Lake American Muslim undertakes multicultural activities such as our festival A Celebration of Cultural Diversity to generate mutual understanding and goodwill not only between Muslims and non-Muslims but among all ethnic communities that reside in Salt Lake County through sharing of the very best ethnic cultural artistic expression as part of the American acculturation process."

Response:

Religion is not a race, not an ethnicity.

Becoming an American does not mean forcing your children & women to wear tight bags or scarfs covering most of their heads, and cloth that drapes all the way down to their feet.

Islam is not a race, it's a religion, a "meme set," and as with any set of memes it should be subject to the same set of criticisms that any meme set can be subject to. Criticism. Debate. Openness. Honesty. It's not too much to ask?
 
The sins of Bush should not be apologized for by dishonesty. All conservative religions have inherent lies at their heart. The group Salt Lake American Muslim (SLAAM) is very concerned about what happened with past immigrants to the US. That's nice. But here's a key message: Just stop abusing your children, that's all.

To the Jews: stop mutilating the genitals of your children.

To the Muslims: Ditto, with the added comment that you should also stop requiring your women and girls to wear cloth bags or tight scarfs.

Does your cultural diversity extend to allowing for skeptics and for atheists in your group? How about ex-Muslims? Are these types of people welcome in your "community?"

What is the response of your group to the following video from the Center for Inquiry, about how conservative Islam leads to breeding suicide bombers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxfo11A7XuA

Welcome to America though, where freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and thankfully freedom from religion are supposed to be guaranteed by law. I'm not responsible for the sins of Bush or for what happened in Iraq. I'm also not responsible for the sins of Sadam, or the past sins of the CIA and so on. I'm primarily interested in honesty. Most religions aren't interested in this. Honesty cuts into the preacher's & the Imam's  pay, so of course they hate it.