Protests against Muslim Ban at airports
Friday, January 27, 2017, is the day when President Donald Trump took the first step toward the official persecution of Muslims in the United States and around the world. This day, Trump signed an executive order banning the nationals of seven Muslim countries, four in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen) and three in Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia). The executive order was not limited to the admission of refugees. Even legal immigrants (green card holders and persons with other visas) from these countries returning to the United States were refused entry, causing immense emotional distress to the detained individuals and their families waiting at the U.S. airports. Several federal judges blocked the implementation of the executive order with respect to the people stranded at the U.S. airports. However, The Department of Homeland Security has vowed to enforce the executive order.
Within hours of the signing of the executive order, a mosque in Texas was torched and completely destroyed. Hateful crimes against Muslims in America have been escalating ever since Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates (Ted Cruz and Mario Rubio) have freely employed incendiary rhetoric against the so-called radical Islamic terrorism, a phrase that implicates the religion of Islam as a primary contributing factor in the commission of terrorism. According to the Pew Research, the crimes against Muslims have been on the rise in the past thirty six months, and anti-Muslim crimes include property damage as well as intimidation crimes such as threats of bodily harm. The scene of Muslim women -- their hijabs forcibly ripped apart in public or their husbands detained at the airports or their families arbitrarily disembarked from domestic flights -- is emerging as the poster-scene of persecution.
Jacksonian Removal
Symptoms are sprouting that President Trump is plotting to follow the example of President Andrew Jackson (1829-37). Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon called Trump’s inauguration speech “Jacksonian.” President Trump hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office, invoking deliberate connections with the “populist’” and “patriotic” policies and mindset of his distant predecessor.
In addition to slavery, one of the saddest chapters in American history is the removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. President Jackson who coined the predatory aphorism that “to the victors belong the spoils” was the most forceful president in seizing the lands from the Native Americans and granting them to the White settlers. Jackson defied even the Supreme Court decision to relocate the reluctant tribes, causing the death of nearly sixteen thousand Cherokees under the atrocious conditions of the “Trail of Tears.”
What President Jackson did to Native Americans, President Trump is proposing to do to Mexicans and Muslims. Removal is the key concept that ties Trump with Jackson. Mexicans must be removed from the United States and Muslims must not be allowed entry into the United States. The theme is the same: Native Americans were savages, Mexicans are criminals, and Muslims are terrorists. A peaceful and prosperous America will be “beautiful” and thrive once unwanted groups are removed, killed, or subjugated.
Persecution Rhetoric
It is a well-established historical fact that the persecution begins with the rhetoric of dehumanization. President George Washington said: “Indians and wolves are both beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.” Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, remarked: “If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi… in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.” Andrew Jackson talked much like a race-supremacist: “They (Native Americans) have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.” This rhetoric paved the way for the dehumanization and dispossession of Native Americans.
The rhetoric of the Trump team against Islam, not just Muslims, has departed from the constraints that previous presidents have observed while condemning terrorism. The Trump team’s rhetoric is overreaching, refusing to draw distinctions between ordinary Muslims and Muslim militants. “Islam hates us,” was the broad generalization that Trump used to endorse "We have to play the game at a much tougher level than we’re playing it.” National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was blunt and hateful: “Islamism is a vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people on this planet and it has to be excised." Jeff Sessions, the incoming federal attorney general, calls Islam a “toxic ideology” and has little problem with registering Muslims in the United States. if unchecked, Trump and his men will do great harm to American moral confidence.
Failure
For sure, the people of the United States are divided over the treatment of Muslims. Trump supporters do not view Islam or Muslims favorably. They may not support but will remain silent if persecution escalates. However, millions of Americans, white, black, men, women, will oppose any oppression of Muslims as a community. The protests against Trump’s executive order at various U.S. airports and the supportive speeches by the mayors of New York and Boston indicate that times are gone when an entire community could be dehumanized and tormented. The governor of Washington called the ban cruel and unconstitutional. The U.S. courts, including conservative judges, are unlikely to allow a complete suspension of the Bill of Rights for Muslims by declaring Islam as a religion non grata. The additional factor that over a billion Muslims across the world are watching Trump and his men cannot be ignored in the permutation of persecution.