So a lot of people are already aware of this and I've actually made a few posts about this myself, but secular/western Buddhism is not exactly popular within much of the Buddhist community, but I feel like when its criticized, the criticism usually focuses on the fact that Secular Buddhism is just not really accurate, which is definitely true but I feel like something that kinda gets ignored is the harm that it can cause to actual practitioners of Buddhism. For example I've seen many cases where westerners who had preconceived views of Buddhism as a purely secular, rationalist materialist philosophy that is in complete alignment with western thought see actual Buddhists engaging in very clearly religious practices it can kinda confuse them and many of these people will jump to the conclusion that it isn't their understanding of Buddhism that's wrong but is actually the way Buddhists practice it that's wrong, this usually manifests in a pretty racist way especially against Asian Buddhists, the idea that these "superstitious Asians" having "infected Buddhism" with their pagan idol worshipping culture is a concerningly popular way that many westerners attempt to explain this discrepancy between how they view Buddhism and how its actually practiced, and while this is enough to be condemnable I think it goes further in that it completely reframes who is the primary authority on Buddhism, From this Western perspective, it obviously can't be people from traditionally Buddhist cultures because they have already "corrupted" and "lost the true essence" of Buddhism, so obviously they cant be trusted, instead, the true authority of Buddhism is non Buddhist/secular Buddhist Western Intellectuals who very often know very little about Buddhism, which leads to a lot of misinformation about Buddhism beyond just the idea that its not a religion AND leads to the harassment and mistreatment of actual Buddhists
