The cynic in me thinks it’s becauze most people don’t have any real concept of allyship beyond posting emoji on social media.
I absolutely agree. Being an ally isn’t simply appending emoji to your twitter handle or sticking some phrase in your twitter bio, or even posting a black square. Allyship is not performative, its active. If all you are doing is performance, and you are unwilling to act, you are essentially “The White Moderate” that MLK was talking about (or in this case, the cishet moderate). Even if you are active, it’s important to remember you can still fail to be an ally. While I’ve only met one person like this IRL, I’ve met a few people people online who are being an ally for themselves, not for others. Their mental image of themselves is benevolent and caring, but they blind themselves looking in their mental reflection rather than caring and understanding the struggle they are using to platform themselves.
I think part of this is a combination of capitalist/political alienation and being social-media brained. Capitalism sells the idea of being able to be an activist by buying products, be it LGBTQ+ owned, or having some mega corporation donate a small portion of the proceeds to a charity. And when you believe that words have power and debates can win people’s rights, it’s really easy to feel like you are making an impact by shouting to the void of your echo chamber on social media.
When these seem to be the only means of political action outside voting, thanks to alienation you will certainly feel like an ally when you perform insignificant acts to drum up your chosen cause. Even though the real change comes from more direct actions.
a lot of people seem to have never really met or interacted with Muslim people on a personal level.
That’s certainly true where I live. I’ve met and befriended a single muslim person who still practices their religion. If people were more accepting, or lived in less homogeneous areas (I live in a nearly exclusively christian area) they would be more accepting of those they live near. I think this is illustrated well considering the fact that even a conservative area like mine is LGBTQ+ friendly, if only because most people I know can count one or two people they know directly or through a friend who is LGBTQ+. It’s a lot harder to hate a friend or a neighbor than someone who lives a thousand miles away.