While the world (as usual) worried about politics invading the Paris Olympics, surprisingly, it was the other traditionally taboo topic of dinner parties and water-cooler conversation that brought early controversy to the 2024 games: religion.

During Friday’s opening ceremony in the City of Light, there was a performance that included a group of women and drag queens portraying what looked like iconic images of Jesus and the Last Supper.

As expected, Christian Twitter exploded. Conservative Christian Twitter went a level above explosion, going all-out nuclear. (Speaking of politics, you can probably imagine how America’s “MAGA” constituency reacted.) People were offended and outraged by the display. Many vowed to boycott the rest of the Olympics. Others who were apparently already boycotting the Olympics pointed to the Last Supper scandal as a prime example of why they’d preemptively sworn off the world’s biggest sporting event.

And, somehow, one popular line of thinking bullied its way to the forefront of the noise: They wouldn’t have mocked Islam like that. They would never do something so egregious that would insult Muslims.

It was a sentiment repeated by religious figures, politicians, media pundits, celebrities, and athletes such as boxing star Ryan Garcia:

If you’re confused as to where that part came from, then you might be unaware of the loud segment of society that believes Christians are treated worse than Muslims around the world. They believe Muslims receive more privileges and protections. (Either due to, they believe, a fear of terroristic retaliation, or a commitment to being “woke.”) In the unofficially — and now ironically — titled Oppression Olympics (that don’t just run every four years), there are a lot of Christians who believe they are currently wearing the gold medal among religions in the sport of being publicly persecuted.

Where to begin?

For starters, the “They wouldn’t mock Muslims” crowd is showing a woeful ignorance about Islam. They apparently don’t know that Jesus is one of the most revered prophets of Islam, and not — as is suggested in much of their commentary — Christianity’s equivalent to the prophet Muhammad. So there’s no need for the “What if they mocked Muhammad” hypothetical, since Jesus is also an important figure in Islam.

If that’s not clear enough, there’s more: obviously contrary to popular belief, the Last Supper is depicted in the Quran.

So, in other words, a lot of Muslims were insulted by what happened in Paris. A lot of Muslims also get offended when Jesus is misrepresented; thus, if the Olympic opening ceremony is being condemned as an attack on Christianity, then it should also be condemned as an attack on Islam — it is not at all an example of something that wouldn’t happen to Muslims.

Then, from the population trying to make this a divisive religious thing, there’s the accompanying lack of global awareness and current events.

Any Muslim — or really, any person who follows world news — could’ve informed these inquiring minds that Muslims are being treated with much worse than song-and-dance mockery in France.

On the same day that the Paris Olympics opened, an ongoing story that resurfaced in the news cycle brought renewed attention to France athletic authority banning its Olympic athletes from wearing Islamic hijab headscarves. This aligns with the French government’s efforts to essentially ban hijab altogether — citing the nation’s laws on secularism that prohibit symbols that express religious affiliation in state-affiliated public spaces — the latest in France’s mistreatment of and discrimination against Muslims under current president Emmanuel Macron.

Diaba Konate is a French basketball player who has played for her national team on the junior level and was hoping to earn a spot on the Olympic team in 2024. I wrote about Konate for Ummah Sport during this past college basketball season, when the Big West conference’s Defensive Player of the Year helped UC Irvine make the NCAA Tournament. As a Muslim woman, Konate covers her hair when she plays; which normally wouldn’t be a problem since basketball’s international governing body, FIBA, overturned its own hijab ban in 2017 (joining sports like weightlifting and soccer). However, the French Federation of Basketball (FFBB) isn’t going along with FIBA and continues to prevent its athletes from competing in hijab, which essentially denied one of the nation’s best athletes the opportunity to represent France at the Olympics.

In a USA Today article, journalist Kim Hjelmgaard wrote, “Activists say France’s hijabs ban are not simply discriminatory. They are also effectively preventing Muslim women and girls from fully participating in sports, for recreation or as a career, and this exclusion can negatively impact their lives, including their mental and physical health.”

The piece quotes Hélène Bâ, a human-rights lawyer and basketball player from France who co-founded an activism group fighting against the hijab ban: “It is also an infringement on our fundamental rights and freedoms. It violates our freedom of conscience and religion and our rights to participate in sport. It reinforces gender and racial stereotypes, and it feeds the anti-Muslim hate that already pervades parts of French society.”

But there was no tacky performance piece about that to open the Olympics, allowing certain people to form the belief that France is an unfairly friendly place for Muslims.