What I learned with my top-performing Substack article is many expect me to loathe and detest *all* Muslims uncritically. I'd rather my loathing be *justified*.
There is a really big dynamic that gets missed in all this - the fact European cultures have a wildly different history with historic Islamic interface.
Our political culture is almost wholly Western-focused so the view of Muslims is from the colonial perspective, ie Muslim-as-victim, that is the predominant driver of progressive sympathy. This contrasts with the South/Eastern European experience as Muslims were the enemy who raided/colonised you for centuries and took millions of slaves. So the sympathy angle is absent there & victim/perpetrator script is flipped. Western media missed this when they reported all those closed borders eg in Hungary during that Syrian exodus and it skewed the perspective of Eastern Europeans as bigots etc.
Yeah I think the “Muslims as Victims” and pro-Hamas ppl are such idiots because if you just widen your view a little bit, you see the truth-that Israel is a tiny country surrounded by Muslim countries that they also colonized. Should that be held against them in 2025? Probably not, so people’s obsession with Israel in particular is absurd. They talk about the evil empire of America, of course, but don’t expect ppl to leave or get killed over it. This is why I believe anti-Zionist is usually antisemitic.
The problem with the notion of Islamophobia is that it was coined by analogy with antisemitism. But antisemitism appeared in the 19th century as a RACIAL hatred of Jews (please don't bother pointing out that the Jews are not a race; I know that). Antisemitism is different from religiously-based Jew-hatred, though it blends into the same stinking stew in the heads of individual haters. But Muslims come in all colors, shapes and forms. Even the mindless campus protesters who want to make the war in Gaza a race-based conflict, would not be able to tell a Jewish Israeli from a Palestinian Israeli. So, "Islamophobia" is fear of the religion of Islam. This religion has given the world a lot of reasons for this fear; however, people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists have no idea that different cultures, different countries, and of course, different individuals within "dar-al-Islam" have really different ideas of what this religion is. Muslims in Afghanistan stuff women into bags, while the Muslim countries of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have outlawed the hijab as contrary to the "national spirit". Islam and Islamism are not the same. There are secular Muslims, freethinking Muslims, and yes, even Zionist Muslims. So count me among the Islamojustifobes, even though I have no idea how to pronounce it!
I like it. I have a quibble with the term "Muslim progressives" because most people associate that term with politics and so-called Muslim progressives in Michigan like Rashida Tlaib or Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud are more than happy to share a stage with speakers who praise Hamas or lead chants of "Death to Israel" and weep over the loss of Hezbollah drug-boss-and-pimp Hassan Nasrallah. I think you're referring to people who call for Muslims to embrace an Enlightenment, and... I wish there were more of them.
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. When I spoke of Muslim 'progressives' I was thinking those who deliberately eschewed the more traditional aspects of their religion. I don't consder Tlaib or Hammoud to be true 'progressives', although it's fair to note that a lot of 'progressive' lefties love Hamas and hate jews. You're right in your last line, and I'll remember that when I write about truly 'progressive' Muslims (which would include agreeing to share the world with Jews).
There is a difference between ISLAM (a monotheistic religion whose sacred texts are not any more potentially problematic than those of Christianity or Judaism) and ISLAMISM (a supremacist and religiously extremist variation of political Islam devoted to "Islamic Purity"). For example, Hamas is Islamist. They radicalize locals and get them to "martyr" themselves to commit various kinds of murder (terrible sins in Islam) to further Islamist aims.
Islamists are basically the Spanish Inquisition. The overwhelming majority of Muslims (and there are a lot of them!) are not radicalized. Being an islamophobe is more or less analogous to a fear/conviction that your Presbyterian neighbor, by virtue of being some sort of Christian, is secretly plotting to burn you at the stake.
The only difference being that Islamism is live and well -- but that makes it all the more critical to make the distinction.
That's a good differentiation. Any holy book can be twisted to say whatever you want it to support and the Bible is full of crazy shit too for both Jews and Christians. The Koran IS a more violent book, IMO, and its descriptions of hell are light-years beyond what's offered in the Bible. I still think Muslims need to reform their religion. They have to refute the crazier, violent aspects of the book and make it clear to their own crazies that such interpretations are not acceptable. Just imagine if certain Christians wanted to bring back stoning for adulterers...or forcing rape victims to marry their rapist. Or fed children who made fun of baldness to bears.
I think, though, that there are a lot of Muslim 'buts'. You find the 'buts' in any group. Radicalization is a big problem with Muslims--as I mentioned, your parents might raise you well but you learn Jew-hating and terrorism ideology from your friends, or at the mosque. They perpetuate the 'poison'.
I daresay the Qur'an and Hadith are more problematic than the Tanakh or "New Testament" - check out the war sura (ch. 9 of the Qur'an) for instance. Or consider the fact that Muhammad is held up as the perfect man, whose actions are to be emulated by all men, and then look at what those actions were. If we lived in season 8 of Game of Thrones, one could argue that they're adaptive in an evolutionary sense (though not moral by western standards). But we live in the 21st century, and most westerners will find them abhorrent. So the problem is "orthodox" Islam, and the Muslim community either needs an Enlightenment or a lot more hypocrisy (which I'm a fan of) to embrace modern morals.
Indeed there is a huge difference between hating all Muslims for no reason and the justified fear of Islamism. A Muslim is a person like you and me. An Islamic Extremist is a terrorist who blows up children, infants and Jews in some misguided tribute to their God, who if they had any sense, they’d realize Allah would actually be horrified at the things their doing. It’s ironic that so many Muslims hate Jews and Israel. This is because the Prophet Muhammad didn’t feel that way about Jews at all. He built relationships with, fought alongside and broke bread with Jewish tribes. Not to mention the Qu’ran clearly states that the land of Eretz-Israel is the Jewish people’s eternal homeland given unto Abraham and his descendants by Allah. Not to mention Jews are considered people of the book and will also go to heaven. But the Qu’ran like all holy books, is complex and full of contradictions. So that doesn’t help matters. Returning to the topic at hand, hating all Muslims across the board, Islamophobia is wrong. Plain and simple. full stop. There are many progressive and moderate Muslims living around the West and the world who are not extremists, strongly condemn terrorism, have no problem with Jews or LGBT people, are for gender equality, and believe in democracy. There are even Muslim Zionists. That’s right you read that right, Muslims who support Israel. I’ve met them myself as we have many Bosnian Muslims living in my hometown of St. Louis. There are Muslims who serve in the U.S. Military, are police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, professors, and construction workers, are moms, dads, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and work hard, live their lives, follow the law, and salute the flag. They are NOT the problem and I’m strongly opposed to any discrimination against or racial profiling of Muslim and Arab Americans! But conservative and radical Muslims are a different story. It is justified to be afraid of them. They are violent, hold backwards and illiberal beliefs and refuse to accept diversity or coexist with Christians, Jews, ex-Muslims, LGBT people, or Hindus and hate women’s empowerment or liberation. Also, you’re right we should not fear Muslims immigrating to the West in general but we need to make sure they are willing to assimilate and adopt western culture and values and follow our laws. This is the big problem in Europe right now. Mass immigration from people from very different cultures at a rapid pace is very bad for Europe. Mainstream politicians in Europe are finally starting to wake up to this. They are beginning to realize that if they don’t get real and take care of the problem, far-right parties like the Reform Party in the UK, the National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany will. I also wanted to make another important point returning to the subject of Israel. The Muslim opposition to Israel doesn’t just come from what happened in 1948 with the Nakba. It also comes from a religious belief Muslims hold that the land of Israel is part of the Islamic holy land not to mention some of Islam’s holiest sites like the Al-Aqsa Mosque where the Prophet Muhammad was said to have started his famous night journey to Mecca, and the Dome of the Rock are located there. Also, keep in mind the holy land including Jerusalem, was for a long time under Muslim rule. The holy land is considered dar el-Islam or Islamic land. So many Muslims see the Jewish presence in the land as an intrusion and illegitimate. Of the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam has made the least progress. It is not a bad religion but rather a religion that needs reform and to be updated for the 21st Century. Yes, we should be afraid of some portion of the Muslim population, but not all of it. Let’s be afraid of the portion of the Muslim population that its justified to be. But let’s not get innocent people who were just minding their own business caught up in the process. We’ve all seen from American history how that has turned out with the Japanese Internment Camps in America during WWII for example.
Hi, MAGA Republican here, I appreciate the article and have a few polite thoughts to share for added context.
First, you can safely put me in your Islamojustiphobe category. Unlike what seems to be most Americans, I actually have a passing familiarity with the various strains of Islam, courtesy of two deployments to the Middle East, and recognize that there's a world of difference between, say, Wahabi terrorism and political Quietism. I do not favor religious discrimination against other relatively mainstream religions (basically anything that doesn't mandate murder and is inclined to be likewise tolerant, so not the majority of Muslims who say they want to impose Shari'a Law here, but yes to the minority who say they don't. Live and let live).
Secondly, a few factual points. Unless it's changed significantly since the last time I was there, U.S. aid is almost never actually branded as originating from the U.S. when distributed in the Middle East. Any clear association with the US is considered a security risk to both the aid workers and the recipients, due to soft targets associated with the US tending to be high on the list of terrorist targets. So while a reduction in foreign aid from the US may be unfortunate in many ways, it wasn't generating public good will for us in the first place because almost everyone involved denied OUR involvement.
Likewise, "I wonder if Trump will try a Muslim ban again; he might succeed this time in a more broken, more lawless America." is factually incorrect. The countries on the ban list were all taken from an existing list maintained by the State Department under the prior administration identifying countries that were unable or unwilling to cooperate with even the bare minimum existing standards of identity verification and background checks. Countries on that list included both majority Muslim countries and non majority Muslim countries, the standards used to generate the list had literally nothing to do with religion and everything to do with rates of crime, terrorism, and reliable cooperation with standard security checks. Trump merely stopped letting countries slide that we already knew weren't meeting our neutral standards. You are welcome to draw your own conclusions about whether being majority Muslim had anything to do with high crime, terrorism, and unreliable governance in general, but the fact is that the ban did NOT include many majority Muslim countries that DID provide adequate cooperation with our security checks.
I think we agree on favoring legal immigration by decent people from anywhere, of any religion, that genuinely respect this nation, want to assimilate here (at least to the extent of being law abiding and 'Live and let live ' tolerance for others), and have the skills to fend for themselves in our economy, with appropriate security safeguards against illegal immigration and keeping out criminals and terrorists. Funnily enough, I see that as precisely the MAGA position on the topic, but if you're uncomfortable openly agreeing with MAGA about anything I won't press the point.
I didn't know that about US aid not being branded as American.
The bit about the 'Muslim ban' is good to know too. It's too bad they didn't differentiate that more in the media (Trump himself could have made this clear, although he may not have understood it himself) to let lefties know that only the responsible, reliable Islamic states were still under consideration.
Tump tried to make the point a few times. The media at the time was not exactly known for nuance or running any quotes that presented him as reasonable. In point of fact, the media routinely misrepresented what he said or cherry picked fragments without their surrounding context without providing readers with actual transcripts of his full statement.
For example, you might recall this is the same media ecosystem that literally spent years pushing the false narrative that Trump called Neo-Nazis 'very fine people' (Biden even used this claim in campaign speeches) despite Trump literally prefacing that 'very fine people' statement that he wasn't talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be "condemned totally." Yet the headlines following the speech claimed "Trump said Nazis/White supremacists are fine people" rather than "Trump said Nazis/white supremacists should be condemned totally". The entire concept of "The Muslim Ban" was a partisan attack line from the beginning.
Somewhat ironically, there WAS an immigration policy Trump tried to push during his first term that was killed by Democrats discriminating on the basis of religion. Trump tried to modify priorities for asylum claims processing to give more emphasis to persecuted minority (in the country they are fleeing from) religious groups. It was part of his push to restore religious liberty as equal with other human rights in our foreign policy after the previous administration had largely ignored religious persecution. Recall that this was during a period when religious terrorists were routinely murdering people and entire genocides were taking place. The policy itself applied neutrally: Jews, Christians, Falun Gong, Buddists, even Sunni Muslims in Shia Muslim regions and vice versa would have qualified. Democrats sued on the basis that they alleged the policy would disproportionately help Christians, which marks the only time I've heard the Left admit that Christians are the most widely persecuted religious group worldwide and also ironically marks Democrats actively preventing Trump from easing asylum claims to bring more refugees to the U.S.
Such a rational statement. I have tried saying this kind of thing to the social justice warriors I know, and the reaction is borderline hysterical. One of them said what I was saying was “racist,” a typical ultra woke reaction to anything that isn’t all love and Kumbaya.
This is such a reasonable argument. I hope more people will start to be able to hear points like you raise here without the judgmental, over-emotional self-righteous certainty that the extreme left is famous for.
Keep on hammering this crucial message. Islamic extremism is a potent danger to the world.
The wrathful do not understand that the victory goes to those who win over a majority, which means winning over moderate people, which means you do not demonize whole groups wantonly.
There is a really big dynamic that gets missed in all this - the fact European cultures have a wildly different history with historic Islamic interface.
Our political culture is almost wholly Western-focused so the view of Muslims is from the colonial perspective, ie Muslim-as-victim, that is the predominant driver of progressive sympathy. This contrasts with the South/Eastern European experience as Muslims were the enemy who raided/colonised you for centuries and took millions of slaves. So the sympathy angle is absent there & victim/perpetrator script is flipped. Western media missed this when they reported all those closed borders eg in Hungary during that Syrian exodus and it skewed the perspective of Eastern Europeans as bigots etc.
Yeah I think the “Muslims as Victims” and pro-Hamas ppl are such idiots because if you just widen your view a little bit, you see the truth-that Israel is a tiny country surrounded by Muslim countries that they also colonized. Should that be held against them in 2025? Probably not, so people’s obsession with Israel in particular is absurd. They talk about the evil empire of America, of course, but don’t expect ppl to leave or get killed over it. This is why I believe anti-Zionist is usually antisemitic.
Yeah, Islam gets a free pass for 'imperalism' and 'colonialism' beginning with their founder, who was a military warlord.
The problem with the notion of Islamophobia is that it was coined by analogy with antisemitism. But antisemitism appeared in the 19th century as a RACIAL hatred of Jews (please don't bother pointing out that the Jews are not a race; I know that). Antisemitism is different from religiously-based Jew-hatred, though it blends into the same stinking stew in the heads of individual haters. But Muslims come in all colors, shapes and forms. Even the mindless campus protesters who want to make the war in Gaza a race-based conflict, would not be able to tell a Jewish Israeli from a Palestinian Israeli. So, "Islamophobia" is fear of the religion of Islam. This religion has given the world a lot of reasons for this fear; however, people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists have no idea that different cultures, different countries, and of course, different individuals within "dar-al-Islam" have really different ideas of what this religion is. Muslims in Afghanistan stuff women into bags, while the Muslim countries of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have outlawed the hijab as contrary to the "national spirit". Islam and Islamism are not the same. There are secular Muslims, freethinking Muslims, and yes, even Zionist Muslims. So count me among the Islamojustifobes, even though I have no idea how to pronounce it!
I like it. I have a quibble with the term "Muslim progressives" because most people associate that term with politics and so-called Muslim progressives in Michigan like Rashida Tlaib or Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud are more than happy to share a stage with speakers who praise Hamas or lead chants of "Death to Israel" and weep over the loss of Hezbollah drug-boss-and-pimp Hassan Nasrallah. I think you're referring to people who call for Muslims to embrace an Enlightenment, and... I wish there were more of them.
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. When I spoke of Muslim 'progressives' I was thinking those who deliberately eschewed the more traditional aspects of their religion. I don't consder Tlaib or Hammoud to be true 'progressives', although it's fair to note that a lot of 'progressive' lefties love Hamas and hate jews. You're right in your last line, and I'll remember that when I write about truly 'progressive' Muslims (which would include agreeing to share the world with Jews).
Thanks for understanding! It's a difficult topic, and there's a need for clear thinking like you've provided. I look forward to your follow up piece.
I explain it this way.
There is a difference between ISLAM (a monotheistic religion whose sacred texts are not any more potentially problematic than those of Christianity or Judaism) and ISLAMISM (a supremacist and religiously extremist variation of political Islam devoted to "Islamic Purity"). For example, Hamas is Islamist. They radicalize locals and get them to "martyr" themselves to commit various kinds of murder (terrible sins in Islam) to further Islamist aims.
Islamists are basically the Spanish Inquisition. The overwhelming majority of Muslims (and there are a lot of them!) are not radicalized. Being an islamophobe is more or less analogous to a fear/conviction that your Presbyterian neighbor, by virtue of being some sort of Christian, is secretly plotting to burn you at the stake.
The only difference being that Islamism is live and well -- but that makes it all the more critical to make the distinction.
I'd be interested in what you think.
That's a good differentiation. Any holy book can be twisted to say whatever you want it to support and the Bible is full of crazy shit too for both Jews and Christians. The Koran IS a more violent book, IMO, and its descriptions of hell are light-years beyond what's offered in the Bible. I still think Muslims need to reform their religion. They have to refute the crazier, violent aspects of the book and make it clear to their own crazies that such interpretations are not acceptable. Just imagine if certain Christians wanted to bring back stoning for adulterers...or forcing rape victims to marry their rapist. Or fed children who made fun of baldness to bears.
I think, though, that there are a lot of Muslim 'buts'. You find the 'buts' in any group. Radicalization is a big problem with Muslims--as I mentioned, your parents might raise you well but you learn Jew-hating and terrorism ideology from your friends, or at the mosque. They perpetuate the 'poison'.
I daresay the Qur'an and Hadith are more problematic than the Tanakh or "New Testament" - check out the war sura (ch. 9 of the Qur'an) for instance. Or consider the fact that Muhammad is held up as the perfect man, whose actions are to be emulated by all men, and then look at what those actions were. If we lived in season 8 of Game of Thrones, one could argue that they're adaptive in an evolutionary sense (though not moral by western standards). But we live in the 21st century, and most westerners will find them abhorrent. So the problem is "orthodox" Islam, and the Muslim community either needs an Enlightenment or a lot more hypocrisy (which I'm a fan of) to embrace modern morals.
Indeed there is a huge difference between hating all Muslims for no reason and the justified fear of Islamism. A Muslim is a person like you and me. An Islamic Extremist is a terrorist who blows up children, infants and Jews in some misguided tribute to their God, who if they had any sense, they’d realize Allah would actually be horrified at the things their doing. It’s ironic that so many Muslims hate Jews and Israel. This is because the Prophet Muhammad didn’t feel that way about Jews at all. He built relationships with, fought alongside and broke bread with Jewish tribes. Not to mention the Qu’ran clearly states that the land of Eretz-Israel is the Jewish people’s eternal homeland given unto Abraham and his descendants by Allah. Not to mention Jews are considered people of the book and will also go to heaven. But the Qu’ran like all holy books, is complex and full of contradictions. So that doesn’t help matters. Returning to the topic at hand, hating all Muslims across the board, Islamophobia is wrong. Plain and simple. full stop. There are many progressive and moderate Muslims living around the West and the world who are not extremists, strongly condemn terrorism, have no problem with Jews or LGBT people, are for gender equality, and believe in democracy. There are even Muslim Zionists. That’s right you read that right, Muslims who support Israel. I’ve met them myself as we have many Bosnian Muslims living in my hometown of St. Louis. There are Muslims who serve in the U.S. Military, are police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, professors, and construction workers, are moms, dads, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, and work hard, live their lives, follow the law, and salute the flag. They are NOT the problem and I’m strongly opposed to any discrimination against or racial profiling of Muslim and Arab Americans! But conservative and radical Muslims are a different story. It is justified to be afraid of them. They are violent, hold backwards and illiberal beliefs and refuse to accept diversity or coexist with Christians, Jews, ex-Muslims, LGBT people, or Hindus and hate women’s empowerment or liberation. Also, you’re right we should not fear Muslims immigrating to the West in general but we need to make sure they are willing to assimilate and adopt western culture and values and follow our laws. This is the big problem in Europe right now. Mass immigration from people from very different cultures at a rapid pace is very bad for Europe. Mainstream politicians in Europe are finally starting to wake up to this. They are beginning to realize that if they don’t get real and take care of the problem, far-right parties like the Reform Party in the UK, the National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany will. I also wanted to make another important point returning to the subject of Israel. The Muslim opposition to Israel doesn’t just come from what happened in 1948 with the Nakba. It also comes from a religious belief Muslims hold that the land of Israel is part of the Islamic holy land not to mention some of Islam’s holiest sites like the Al-Aqsa Mosque where the Prophet Muhammad was said to have started his famous night journey to Mecca, and the Dome of the Rock are located there. Also, keep in mind the holy land including Jerusalem, was for a long time under Muslim rule. The holy land is considered dar el-Islam or Islamic land. So many Muslims see the Jewish presence in the land as an intrusion and illegitimate. Of the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam has made the least progress. It is not a bad religion but rather a religion that needs reform and to be updated for the 21st Century. Yes, we should be afraid of some portion of the Muslim population, but not all of it. Let’s be afraid of the portion of the Muslim population that its justified to be. But let’s not get innocent people who were just minding their own business caught up in the process. We’ve all seen from American history how that has turned out with the Japanese Internment Camps in America during WWII for example.
I have a Muslim friend who's always been a big LGBTQ supporter but, like me, has pulled back from that support because of all the trans-insanity.
Hi, MAGA Republican here, I appreciate the article and have a few polite thoughts to share for added context.
First, you can safely put me in your Islamojustiphobe category. Unlike what seems to be most Americans, I actually have a passing familiarity with the various strains of Islam, courtesy of two deployments to the Middle East, and recognize that there's a world of difference between, say, Wahabi terrorism and political Quietism. I do not favor religious discrimination against other relatively mainstream religions (basically anything that doesn't mandate murder and is inclined to be likewise tolerant, so not the majority of Muslims who say they want to impose Shari'a Law here, but yes to the minority who say they don't. Live and let live).
Secondly, a few factual points. Unless it's changed significantly since the last time I was there, U.S. aid is almost never actually branded as originating from the U.S. when distributed in the Middle East. Any clear association with the US is considered a security risk to both the aid workers and the recipients, due to soft targets associated with the US tending to be high on the list of terrorist targets. So while a reduction in foreign aid from the US may be unfortunate in many ways, it wasn't generating public good will for us in the first place because almost everyone involved denied OUR involvement.
Likewise, "I wonder if Trump will try a Muslim ban again; he might succeed this time in a more broken, more lawless America." is factually incorrect. The countries on the ban list were all taken from an existing list maintained by the State Department under the prior administration identifying countries that were unable or unwilling to cooperate with even the bare minimum existing standards of identity verification and background checks. Countries on that list included both majority Muslim countries and non majority Muslim countries, the standards used to generate the list had literally nothing to do with religion and everything to do with rates of crime, terrorism, and reliable cooperation with standard security checks. Trump merely stopped letting countries slide that we already knew weren't meeting our neutral standards. You are welcome to draw your own conclusions about whether being majority Muslim had anything to do with high crime, terrorism, and unreliable governance in general, but the fact is that the ban did NOT include many majority Muslim countries that DID provide adequate cooperation with our security checks.
I think we agree on favoring legal immigration by decent people from anywhere, of any religion, that genuinely respect this nation, want to assimilate here (at least to the extent of being law abiding and 'Live and let live ' tolerance for others), and have the skills to fend for themselves in our economy, with appropriate security safeguards against illegal immigration and keeping out criminals and terrorists. Funnily enough, I see that as precisely the MAGA position on the topic, but if you're uncomfortable openly agreeing with MAGA about anything I won't press the point.
I didn't know that about US aid not being branded as American.
The bit about the 'Muslim ban' is good to know too. It's too bad they didn't differentiate that more in the media (Trump himself could have made this clear, although he may not have understood it himself) to let lefties know that only the responsible, reliable Islamic states were still under consideration.
Tump tried to make the point a few times. The media at the time was not exactly known for nuance or running any quotes that presented him as reasonable. In point of fact, the media routinely misrepresented what he said or cherry picked fragments without their surrounding context without providing readers with actual transcripts of his full statement.
For example, you might recall this is the same media ecosystem that literally spent years pushing the false narrative that Trump called Neo-Nazis 'very fine people' (Biden even used this claim in campaign speeches) despite Trump literally prefacing that 'very fine people' statement that he wasn't talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be "condemned totally." Yet the headlines following the speech claimed "Trump said Nazis/White supremacists are fine people" rather than "Trump said Nazis/white supremacists should be condemned totally". The entire concept of "The Muslim Ban" was a partisan attack line from the beginning.
Somewhat ironically, there WAS an immigration policy Trump tried to push during his first term that was killed by Democrats discriminating on the basis of religion. Trump tried to modify priorities for asylum claims processing to give more emphasis to persecuted minority (in the country they are fleeing from) religious groups. It was part of his push to restore religious liberty as equal with other human rights in our foreign policy after the previous administration had largely ignored religious persecution. Recall that this was during a period when religious terrorists were routinely murdering people and entire genocides were taking place. The policy itself applied neutrally: Jews, Christians, Falun Gong, Buddists, even Sunni Muslims in Shia Muslim regions and vice versa would have qualified. Democrats sued on the basis that they alleged the policy would disproportionately help Christians, which marks the only time I've heard the Left admit that Christians are the most widely persecuted religious group worldwide and also ironically marks Democrats actively preventing Trump from easing asylum claims to bring more refugees to the U.S.
Great points
Such a rational statement. I have tried saying this kind of thing to the social justice warriors I know, and the reaction is borderline hysterical. One of them said what I was saying was “racist,” a typical ultra woke reaction to anything that isn’t all love and Kumbaya.
This is such a reasonable argument. I hope more people will start to be able to hear points like you raise here without the judgmental, over-emotional self-righteous certainty that the extreme left is famous for.
Keep on hammering this crucial message. Islamic extremism is a potent danger to the world.
The wrathful do not understand that the victory goes to those who win over a majority, which means winning over moderate people, which means you do not demonize whole groups wantonly.