Try to not be provoked by people who have themselves been provoked.
When someone is being manipulated, they are almost like a drunk person. Their worst sentiments, fears, and prejudices are deliberately inflamed and left to run amok.
This is largely the case with most “Islamaphobes” who rant against Muslims and Islam, while they are actually completely ignorant of the religion, and most likely have never even met a Muslim.
These types of people are only a problem because people in power incite the worst aspects of their personalities which would otherwise lie dormant, or which may otherwise even evaporate.
The power structure simply wants to divert their discontent and sense of insecurity about their lives, which they feel for entirely legitimate reasons, against an illegitimate target. They do not want the masses to correctly identify who is actually making their lives miserable, so they want to redirect their hostility against us.
So when someone tells you “Islam is evil” or something like this, you should try to understand that they are themselves being oppressed, disempowered, disenfranchised, impoverished, and they are being manipulated so that they can never find a way out of their misery.
Rather than being drawn into this sort of manufactured conflict with them, it would be far better for us to try address the actual power structure that is manipulating them.