As racist as it would be if there were a US show based on how the French are scary, and no one involved with the show spoke French. It means that they are likely exclusively trading in stereotypes and Western orientialist imagery and tropes. I've never seen the show.
France is not a race. That would be xenophobia, which is a different brand of bigotry.
Not speaking Arabic is a grey area -- not all Muslims are Arabic, despite the fact that the Quran is written in Arabic and only canonical in that language. There are millions and millions of Muslims who do not speak Arabic, and rely on their clergy to teach them the Quran.
While it's apparently not the case here, the absence of an arabic-speaking component on the production team does not necessarily preclude a Muslim component on a production team.
No, but it does show that the writers who are making storylines around Arabic speaking nations and cultures don't have anyone who lives in that culture.
What do you think a race is? The French are a race under any defensible definition. They're more closely related to each other than they are to Georgians.
No, racism is discriminating based on (perceived) race, not merely the belief that race exists. (Which it manifestly does, as a cultural construct.)
Nationality and ethnicity likewise exist as related, but usually distinct, cultural constructs to race, and we have different names for bigotry based on them. Though, obviously, the distinction between these forms of bigotry is somewhat nitpicky, and often not meaningful, and a lot of time "racism" is used broadly to refer to bigotry based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.
> [...] the belief that race exists. (Which it manifestly does, as a cultural construct.)
That's like saying that aliens exist as a cultural construct. Let's not mix reality and widely shared fantasies.
How would you call the unscientific belief that races exist in the human species, if not "racism"?
> a lot of time "racism" is used broadly to refer to bigotry based on race, ethnicity, or nationality
True, just like "vagina" is used to refer to the vulva. Errors need to be pointed out, not accepted in silence, even if the hoi polloi will make you pay for it.
"exclusively trading in stereotypes and Western orientialist imagery and tropes"
To be fair, they could also be simply trading on whatever happens to be in the news. If you open a newspaper / watch the news, most of what you will see about the region can be summed up by 'crazy islamists killing people, threaten America with annihilation'.
I'm guessing you don't really know how TV shows are filmed. There could be dozens of people in the production who speak Arabic, but the odds that they would actually go on set and analyze the props is next to nil unless you are a person who works on the set. Is your argument that a sound man or camera operator speaking arabic would lend credibility to a show involving the middle east?