Trump’s Muslim ban

US President Donald Trump’s order banning the entry to the US of all refugees, most travellers and even US permanent residents from seven Muslim-majority countries, took many world leaders by surprise.

In fact, the measure took his own Cabinet officials by surprise.

According to The New York Times, General John Kelly, Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, learned that the president was signing the order from television.

Trump’s White House failed to consult with the departments responsible for administering immigration. Customs and Border Protection, whose officers inspect international travellers arriving at US airports, were barely given any instructions on how to implement the order.

Predictably, the result was chaos, confusion, anguish and fear for thousands, if not millions of people, who no longer knew if they could travel abroad or return home, or if their loved ones could visit them.

Green card holders, students and others who happened to be abroad now faced the prospect of being exiled.

Refugees — including Iraqis who worked for the US army and spent years being vetted — faced limbo or oblivion.

Trump has denied that this is a “Muslim ban” even though he campaigned specifically on a promise to implement it. 

Moreover, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani told US media that Trump had specifically consulted him on how to ban Muslims, but to do so “legally” — in other words without calling it a Muslim ban.

What Trump probably did not foresee was the outpouring of opposition.

Thousands of Americans took to the streets and showed up at airports across the country to protest.

Attorneys-general of more than a dozen US states condemned the ban as unconstitutional and announced that they would collectively sue the federal government.

Legal advocacy and immigrants’ rights groups immediately filed lawsuits.

About a dozen senators from Trump’s own Republican Party — including well-known conservatives such as John McCain — condemned the measure as unfair and counterproductive.

Similar objections came from leaders in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries — Trump’s ban reportedly covers their citizens as well if they hold dual nationality with one of the seven listed countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan.

At the same time, Trump provoked outrage in Mexico with another order, to begin construction of a border wall.

In only one week, Trump managed to antagonise not just a large segment of the US population (his approval rating, according to Gallup, is almost at a record low for a new president), but much of the world as well.

This includes some of the US’ closest allies and trading partners.

The US leader insists his intent is to protect Americans from terrorism, specifically radical Islamic terrorism.

Trump has every right to pursue such a legitimate goal. He is also indisputably right to put his country’s interests ahead of any other consideration, as he proclaimed in his inauguration speech.

It is not the goal that is the problem; it is the method of reaching it.

In my last week article, I mentioned that only by embracing and mobilising the entire Muslim nation can the “war on terror” be won.

It has so far failed, quite miserably, because the “war on terror” turned out to be a war on Islam and Muslims.

The problem with the Trump doctrine is that he is once again implicating Islam, the Muslim world, in the crimes committed by so-called radical Islamic terrorists like Daesh and its ilk.

Those outlaw criminals, whose unprecedented atrocities target Muslims in the same manner as they target others, are also condemned by Muslim majorities and are sought for destruction by the Muslim countries that are currently engaged with the US in the same battle.

Such an approach plays well for the extremists, Daesh in particular, and therefore is counterproductive and dangerous.

The negative implications of wholesale alienation of Muslims are countless.

The seven countries named in the Trump executive order have been suffering for years from instability, violent conflicts and chaos. The US, not by coincidence, has directly intervened in at least six of them.

Any objective investigation of the root causes would discover many foreign hands there.

It would reveal how external factors used those poor countries as theatres for their manoeuvres and opportunist pursuit of their interests, vastly increasing, if not creating, the destabilisation and chaos that fostered this “radical Islamic terrorism”.

Radicalisation has been the direct product of the despair, misery, injustice, oppression and impoverishment to which people in many such countries are subjected.

And yet, the people of those countries, like those in all others, are good people, educated, peace-loving, civilised, principled, law-abiding, opposed to violence, open to diversity, respectful of others and also friends of the US.

And like in every other country, you might find a few who would do wrong. 

Many citizens of the banned countries appreciate America’s democracy and openness. Many love the American way of life and wish they could make America their home.

Why punish the good majority of Syrians, Iranians, Sudanese, Libyans, Yemenis and others for the possible crimes of a tiny minority?

Why turn away refugees who are victims of wars?

The US prides itself on being open to all people, regardless of race or religion, as the land of opportunities, liberty, freedom and human dignity.

No wonder so many Americans are infuriated by the president’s executive order.

Judging from the size and the intensity of the rejection, it is hoped that such indiscriminate moves will be revised for the sake of the American people and the world.