Apologies for the delayed response- I spent almost all of yesterday driving.

I think the issue I hold with the above thought experiment is that you've managed at once to overly narrow and broaden the subject of the discussion to a point at which the original subject matter gets lost in the shuffle. We're no longer talking about racism versus nationalism versus xenophobia, we're talking about the merits and pitfalls of Sharia law- essentially a policy discussion. And we can argue the benefits and pitfalls of Sharia, but it's a little like listening to somebody complain about the Jews' conspiracy to control world media and then say, "let's dig into that, though; would a worldwide monopoly on the media really benefit us as a polity?"

Reading Roseanna and Amy's comments as charitably as you have for a moment, I'll discard nearly every other portion of the original quote; I'll ignore the part about "stinkin' Muslim crap" and "Muslim through and through" and "that's not America" and the speculation of whether or not this Somali immigrant-cum-stateswoman is here legally, and focus solely, as you'd have it, on her passing reference to Sharia. We then have to examine where she got this "Sharia" notion. Is there anything in Omar's voting record that indicates an affinity towards Sharia law? Have Rosanna and Amy studied Sharia? Do they even know what it means? In order to have the discussion you want, we have to take it as a matter of course that when they say "all that Muslim crap," they only take issue with the specter of Sharia, and that they are coming to the discussion with a viewpoint as informed as your own vis-a-vis apostasy, vis-a-vis state response to homosexuality, vis-a-vis capital and corporal punishment, etc. Furthermore, we have to grant that they care to recognize that "Sharia" only encompasses one practical portion of a fundamentalist minority of the world's second largest religion with a history spanning several millennia.

But ultimately, to do so would be absurd. I think you and I can agree without too much controversy that in the above case, "Sharia" is shorthand. It's a condensation of a rich and broad culture into a bogeyman signifier. Look, here's Islam:

And here's Islam:

And here it is again:

So why is it that in these discussions we always have to approach it from the terms of this

and this

and this?

You opened the discussion searching for a working definition of racism. I'd say that when person A narrows the culture, religion, and physical characteristics of person B down to the basest caricature, and then rejects person B based on that caricature, that's as good a definition of racism as one might need.

So, then. If it's not too hypocritical (I'll leave that up to your good judgment), I'd argue a sort of like-for-like. If someone is comfortable simplifying my cultural standpoint down to a cartoonish shorthand, I'm comfortable discarding the finer distinctions between xenophobia, racism and nationalism in favor of a catch-all term, in this case racism. The problem with ten-dollar words is that they have a way of sterilizing subject matter. As a for instance, "nationalism" has recently been re-introduced into the American lexicon as a non-pejorative. If we call all of what was discussed above "ethno-nationalism" rather than "racism," isn't it entirely possible that we might then inadvertently deem such behavior acceptable? Better to err on the side here of stigma rather than normalization, I think. Racism is a fine word for it.

For all that, though, your point is well taken. We could be only a little less charitable to the above actors and assume that their issue with Rep. Omar has nothing to do with the color of her skin in conjunction with her cultural background, and only has to do with her religion. When John F. Kennedy ascended to the presidency, there were those who vocally decried his "Papist" affinities and wondered whether the Vatican would now run the White House. This isn't a perfect analog for our current discussion, but it subtracts the thornier issues of phenotype. In which case, "racism" wouldn't exactly fit the bill, would it? Taken in this light, I can respect your original point. I ask you, then, to reconsider mine. Whether or not the dumbing-down of a religious or cultural group to base signifiers, and then ascribing nefarious motives to this simplified Other is racist or xenophobic or ethno-nationalist becomes extraneous. It all merits an unequivocal condemnation.