Trump’s Muslim Ban

Treating People of the Muslim Faith in this Manner Will Not (And Cannot) Make America or the World a Safer Place

 

This has been said before and said better, by people smarter and funnier than me, but I believe it does bear repeating: the number one recruitment tool needed to galvanise people into mass and immediate action is for them to suffer senseless oppression. With that considered, it leads us to the inevitable conclusion that Donald Trump and anyone who supports his recent, widespread immigrant ban is leading the charge to radicalise Islamic extremists.

This would seem somewhat at odds with his expressed intention to limit terroristic actions and uphold his sworn duty to protect the American people. Yet this is the point we’ve arrived at, where all immigrants from the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen are banned outright from entering the United States pending an overhaul of the vetting process used to determine whether they pose a threat to the country. Until very recently (like, hours ago), this even included people in the possession of a green card; that is to say, those holding a permanent residency visa allotted to foreign-born citizens of the United States. In other words, Trump issued a decree banning the return of Americans in order to… protect Americans.

Beyond that, there are those fleeing the war-torn hellscape that Syria has become, comprised largely of (and I don’t think I really need to say this) defenseless women and children, who have now effectively been barred on the grounds that they may be terrorists. Shit, if that’s not bottom of the barrel enough, this legislation will effectively prohibit soldiers and translators who worked in coalition with American troops in Syria, Iraq and other combat zones from entering the United States. Try to stifle that impulsive desire to kick an Oompa Loompa while you think that through: men and women who actively saved the lives of Americans can’t come to America for their own benefit because… Muslims.

I should add a big almighty, “Fuck you”, in response to any who claim that this is not a blanket ban on people of the Muslim faith. Though the order does not expressly state this, there are amendments that claim the United States is still open to those seeking sanctuary from religious persecution in any of the above mentioned nations. Seeing as there’s literally no situation in which an Islamic person would be discriminated against in, say, Iraq for practicing their religion, it’s basically a coded statement to Christians, Jews and people of other faiths that the United States welcome them still.

All this because Trump, some of his cabinet and at least a pocket of the American people are utterly terrified of people who look like the bad guys on Homeland. On that point – with their irrational yet potent fear being escalated night after night by the likes of Fox News and Trump himself – let me concede that I at least understand the impulse these people have. Never mind that only 54 Americans died on U.S. soil last year as the result of a terrorist attack implemented by a Muslim, where 49 of those happened at the Orlando night club shooting… or that the guy who committed that atrocity was born in New York! People want to feel safe, and when the guy they voted for says, “Brown folks are killing you so I’ll stop the brown folks”, it registers as a sensible plan to them.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though: this sort of thing is exactly what ISIS wants. For years they’ve been declaring a war on the West, and the U.S. specifically. They’ve accused Americans of deplorable acts (like drone strikes, which, yeah) that justify the violence and extremism they display abroad and would hope to inspire Muslim Americans to commit in the U.S. So far, they’ve been pretty unsuccessful in the latter attempt, but let’s see how fucking long that lasts now that the President of the United States has publicly condemned their religion. I have no doubt that this will lead to more attacks in the U.S. and that, when those instances occur, the people who support this ban will hold them up as evidence that their instincts were correct and that the policies enacted by their glorious leader McFucknugget were prescient and timely. They will, I’m sure, see absolutely no correlation between these actions and the violence that ensues, between the very simple mechanism of cause and effect.

Here’s the good news: in the eight long, almost fucking interminable days since Trump took office, his disapproval rating has hit 50%. To start with, I think we all needed a good laugh, so thank you for that to those 50% of Americans. Beyond that, it’s heartening to see just how expeditiously the majority of people have begun to turn on a man and a party whose chief goals seem to be reducing women’s reproductive rights, building a useless wall at the expense of their own people, taking away their health care and telling their Muslim friends to fuck off. Believe me, things can get darker still and that dawn may well be a long time coming. But, huddled together like this against the bracing abyss, chuckling about how many more of us are in the hate club than the fan club, I think we can manage to hold the darkness off a little while longer.