I don't see anyone saying it's unfair to talk about the beliefs a specific Muslim candidate has expressed but Maguire wasn't talking about anything Mamdani has said. He made a sweeping claim about an entire culture, saying they considered it a virtue to lie when that is in fact broadly condemned. He almost certainly based that belief on propaganda about the concept of taqiyya which has been swirling around right-wing circles for the last couple of decades. That concept refers to a narrow exception allowing Muslims to conceal or disavow their religious beliefs when they fear for their safety. The term is derived from a root meaning of caution or fear, and dates back to when Islam was a minority religion whose followers had real examples of recantations forced under torture. Christians active in right-wing politics have claimed that it is both broadly practiced and interpreted to allow lying to spread Islam itself despite limited evidence and strident disagreement by actual scholars – there's a good summary here with a lot of links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya#Contemporary_debate

This is about as fair as finding a Seven Mountains Dominionist preacher who says that Christians need to control all aspects of society, claiming that they speak for all Christians, and then claiming that belief is secretly shared by a Christian political candidate who has never voiced supported for that sect and must override all of their stated views or past actions.

I'm an atheist now so I don't have a god in this fight but I've known enough people of each of the Abrahamic religions that I wouldn't make a general criticism of any individual except based on things they personally said or did.

Because Muslims believe in the Quran is the perfect word of God, we don't really have definitions like a liberal Pelosi style Christian (except Sufism maybe?) that believe abortion should be legal and a Southern Baptist style Christian whose beliefs, to me, preclude them from being someone I would vote for.

I theoretically grew up Catholic (when visiting grandma) so I know the differences in Christians and pretty quickly understand a person's basic positions, but I have no way to know that with Muslim candidates. Add in that Islam says the Quran is absolute truth/Gods word I have to assume someone who says they are Muslim are the equivalent of Christian fundamentalists because they can't just say a Muslim version of Pelosi/San Francisco Christian.

Thank you for helping expound on this. We need to be able to discuss religious positions with Muslims. Without that, we default to our understanding of the most fundamentalist interpretation. Based on the religions promotion of sex/sex slaves as rewards I have real questions/concerns that currently aren't allowed to be asked/answered.

Neither wanting to understand a politician's personal position, nor defaulting to an interpretation (even the most strictly fundamentalist possible take) without having more details are racist. They are both very valid. I default to assuming a Christian politician is a fundamentalist pretty quickly when they won't expand on their positions. That isn't racism either.

I don't make assumptions about individuals, but I definately make assumptions about politicians all the time based on the limited knowledge I have access to, especially politicians that claim to be followers of a religion.

Personally I think Mamdani is an excellent candidate and hope he wins. But I wish we could have some much needed discussions, like we can about Christian candidates. We need more dialog, less falling back to wikipedia or potentially anti-Muslim based interpretations. More humanity, less 'you can't ask that' when we have asked about religion at least my life. Carter's religion was core to his political 'being'. I don't think that assertion made was racist absent more context from the individual. Even the Wikipedia page you cite says:

"In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly."

We live in a culture that outnumbers Muslims. This says to me their religion allows them to lie/fake believing in the social norms/fake being friendly.

The same people downvoting me here I am sure feel it is required Jewish people state their Israel positions in this current environment in a way they don't non-jewish, or call out Jewish politicians that don't publically stake out positions. Questioning what they believe is a basic part of how we approach politicians with public religious positions.

Who specifically is saying that we can’t ask them? You’ve made that claim repeatedly but I don’t see anyone saying it’s inappropriate to ask a candidate what they believe on topics relevant to their office. The condemnation is about sweeping assertions about large heterogeneous groups.