They don’t. However, many right-wingers can’t quite understand how one can defend someone being persecuted for racial reasons (Muslims in this case), yet strongly disagree with them on some other aspect.
I've never understood this response: everybody already knows that "Muslim" is not a race.
When people refer to racism against Muslims, they're referring to the ways in which Western countries, in particular, racialize a religious group: our tendency to treat Islam as a uniquely Arab/ME phenomenon and to assume the contrapositive as well (that anybody who looks vaguely Middle Eastern is Muslim). These are all patently obvious ways in which people are racist against Muslims, even though "Muslim" itself is not a race.
