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I’ll use myself as an example.
There were some guys having an argument in another room, and it got increasingly intense. They were speaking some kind of Arabic. I thought they were genuinely mad at each other, but then one of them mentioned an athlete’s name and started listing what sounded like stats.
While telling this story at a party, I said something like “Arabic is a very angry-sounding language.” I noticed someone’s eyes get large, and I didn’t realize until then how racist I had unintentionally been.
Later, I thought more about it. Any language that you don’t understand sounds bad if people are having an emotionally charged conversation. It didn’t occur to me until then how easy it is to be thoughtless and racially insensitive.
I generally try not to be an asshole, but I messed up big time. I have no idea who he was, but I’ll always be grateful to the guy whose eyes got big. He gave me a much-needed reality check.
Arabic speaker here and this sounds like the most harmless statement of all time. I mean you're right in that it was probably more about the emotionally charged concepts than Arabic as a language, but still, I think this is one of those "white people getting mad at other white people when the minority in question wouldn't think much of it" things.
People often say that German sounds angry. It has nothing to do with the skin color or religion of the speakers. I've not thought of Arabic as an angry language, but I don't think that's a racist statement.
The Klingon language is entirely artificial, it was created to bring an aggressive and war-like alien race to life. You'll find people referring to it as "Space German."
If someone from a country has a history of making stereotypes about Arabic men being terrorists then saying their language sounds angry is in line with those cultural stereotypes. If I heard a white person in the US saying that it would come across as racist.