Is criticism of Islam islamophobic and racist?

On the racist question, Christopher Hitchens says no, and categorically so:

"You cannot be a racist by criticising the Islamic religion, by definition you cannot. There’s now a stupid term that’s trying to be imported into our culture, "islamophobia", as if to group it with racism in general. Nonsense. I won’t have it. I dislike Islam very much, just as I do all religions, and ive every tight to say that I think it’s an absurd and wicked belief."

Glenn Greenwald gives a slippery view to the contrary, saying that the label of racism for anti-muslim animus is a "rational view":

The Orwell Method

George Orwell by Ralph Steadman, with full selection here

[UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens explains how Orwell was "arguing all of the time with his own prejudices and his own fears and his own bigotries and his own shortcomings."

 

UPDATE II: Also read my blog post from September 2013 on opposition as the ointment to groupthink.]

 

Paul Muldoon explained:

"Be deeply suspicious, first of all, of your own prejudices before you begin to approach the prejudices of others."

V.S. Pritchett echoed this:

"George Orwell... was more likely in politics to chasten his own side than the enemy."  

Christopher Hitchens too:

"The unpleasant facts that George Orwell chose to face were usually the ones that put his own position, or his own preference to the test."