Here are my top 3:
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Whataboutism with Christainity - I’ve been a vocal critic of islam in atheist spaces for well over a decade. There has not been a single instance of me criticizing islam where I did not get a hoard of atheists bringing up Christianity for no reason. There’s no relevance and no point to it, but they get really mad when I try to focus on islam. It’s like why can’t they just accept that islam or other religions can be criticized on their own merits independently?
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Self centered American atheists - Whenever I ever bring up my and my family’s experiences in the middle east and how horrible islam is over there, there will always be a handful of ignorant American atheists who can’t comprehend that the world is more than their country. No ISIS and your dumb MAGA uncle are not the same.
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“All religions are bad” - I hate this statement because it’s like “all lives matter”. Yeah, no shit all religions are bad. That’s literally the baseline of any atheist community. All the discussions lie in the nuances beyond that. Smearing this statement all over atheist spaces is completely meaningless.
What about you guys? Are there any things in the atheist community that you noticed that make your eyes twitch? I would love to hear them.
At least for point #1, I think people are generally pointing to Christianity having a far larger blood trail than Islam, at least in modern days.
The genocidal and imperial actions of the US (including its support of Israel) are generally executed by Christian nationalists who believe all non-Christians are heretical heathens who must be destroyed.
They genuinely are an Apocalypse cult who think stuffing every last Jew into Jerusalem will initiate the Apocalypse and bring Jesus back. That is unironically the reason the US supports Israel.
Even ISIS’s rise, like you brought up, can be traced back to Christian Nationalists. The war with and subsequent destabilization of Iraq that lead to ISIS rising was justified by those leading it on the right as a Christian crusade against violent Muslims.
If you have a chance to ever listen to Christian Nationalists talk about climate change, and they aren’t denying it, they’ll justify it to claim “that’s the Apocalypse God promised us so we’re doing things right”.
Or if you listen to them about nuclear war, they unironically will tell you they want it, and a nuclear war is the Apocalypse that’ll bring Jesus back, and then they’ll admit that support of Israel is partially to meet that end.
So I believe it isn’t generally people trying to dismiss your experience. I believe its people pointing to the biggest evil crowd, who are Christian Nationalists in the USA.