Reuben Abati: Donald Trump and the Muslim World

I am not a fan of Donald Trump, the incumbent
President of the United States. I didn’t stand with
him. I stood with her- Hillary Clinton- in the last
US Presidential election. No other election in
recent American history has been more
international in terms of interest and emotional
involvement. Trump’s election even divided the
Nigerian middle class. A majority of Christians in
Nigeria stood with Donald Trump. They liked his
anti-Muslim rhetoric, and in a country where
religion is such a volatile subject and the
Christian community feels as if it is under siege
from radical Islamic extremism, it was easy for a
category of Nigerians to see Trump’s politics
being in sync with their own fears and
expectations.
Pro-secessionist, Biafran and Christian protesters
in the South East also supported Trump. On his
Inauguration Day, they organized a rally; some of
them were killed, in the process, by Nigerian
security agents. It is always so easy to read
American politics into every other politics globally
because of America’s status as a superior power
and the global dominance of its culture. Many
Nigerians who opposed Hillary Clinton of the
Democratic Party also did so, for example, for
partisan reasons, because they felt the
Democratic administration of President Barrack
Obama was responsible in many ways for the
outcome of the 2015 Presidential election in
Nigeria.
They wanted a pound of flesh – they wanted the
Democrats out of the White House, the same way
the PDP exited Aso Villa. The funny thing is that
Nigerians, who do not hold American citizenship,
were not in a position to vote in the US election,
but this didn’t deter us from weeping more than
the Americans. In my case, I opposed Trump
because I consider him a vile, navel-gazing, crude,
child-like nativist, whose Presidency could pose a
threat to the free world.
I have been proven right. The United States is in
trouble because of Donald Trump. In less than
two weeks in office, President Trump has signed
executive orders, which amount to an assault on
the liberal international order. America is great
because it became the dreamland and the symbol
of freedom, prosperity and fulfilment for persons
and families across the world. It is great because
it became the melting pot for global genius, the
preferred destination for generations of talented
persons in all fields of human endeavour. America
is great because its diversity and multiculturalism
became pillars of its exceptionalism.
Donald Trump, on twitter where he spends his
waking hours, and on the podium, where he rants,
says his ambition is to “Make America Great
Again” (#MAGA), but it is beginning to look as if
Trump will end up making America small. The
Executive Orders which he has signed so far, are
intended to upturn America’s foreign policy in the
last 50 years, isolate the country from the rest of
the world and turn it into an island. America
appears destined to become a pariah state for the
next four years. With Trump, America now sees
the rest of the world as an ocean of enemies,
with this persecution complex dressed up as
national interest.
The most pernicious of the Executive Orders is
Trump’s suspension of the US refugee programme
for four months and the entry ban for 90 days
imposed on nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Is the action
legal? Section 212(f) of the US Immigration and
Nationality Act (INA) (1952) empowers the
President to restrict immigration access to the
United States: “Whenever the President finds that
the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens
into the United States would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States, he may by
proclamation, and for such period as he shall
deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or
any class of aliens as immigrants and non-
immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any
restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” The
sentiment behind this legal provision is
protectionism, which is ironic in a country of
immigrants.
This is Donald Trump keeping his campaign
promise to protect America for Americans and
review immigration policies. Is this new? No. Over
the years, America has always tried to control the
influx of immigrants. This was the case even
under President Barack Obama. Trump reminds
us of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which
turned back the Chinese, and a similar law in
1924, which targeted Asian and African
immigrants, both of which were corrected by the
Immigration Act of 1965, which forbids
discrimination on the basis of national origin,
ancestry and race. The only problem is that
Trump’s approach is crazy, a case of policy
mixed with bigotry and narcissism, and an
unconstitutional gambit which violates the First
Amendment, hidden under the banner of
“protecting the nation from foreign terrorist
entry.” Given the contradictions between the
1952 and 1965 Acts and the First Amendment,
Trump’s actions are perhaps better tested in the
court of law.
He wants to build a wall at the Mexican border.
This has already caused a rift with Mexico. He is
also holding radical Islam responsible for security
breaches in the United States, and this is certainly
because foreign-born Muslims have been
responsible for many acts of terror in the US: the
9/11, the Boston bombing, the Nigerian
underwear bomber; across Europe, radical Islamic
extremism has also proven to be a problem.
Trump’s solution is to demonize Muslim-majority
countries and arrive at the simple solution that
the best way to protect America is to shut out
the Muslims. He insists that “This is not about
religion – this is about terror and keeping our
country safe. There are 40 different countries
worldwide that are majority Muslim that is not
affected by this order.” I don’t believe him.
The chosen seven countries that have been shut
out have not in any way been responsible for
most of the acts of terror in the US in recent
times. Trump leaves out Egypt, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim-majority
countries, but the kind of chaos that has been
generated makes every Muslim going to the
United States vulnerable. You don’t have to be
from the seven targeted countries, once you bear
a Muslim name, you could be subjected to greater
scrutiny by Customs and Border Protection
Officers. Some of the people who have been
harassed at the borders since last Friday when
the Executive Order was passed are American
citizens with dual nationality.
While Donald Trump is proposing greater vetting
and scrutiny of the influx of Muslims, and
refugees, he is nevertheless willing to allow more
Christians into the United States. This is the
message that comes across: Christians are
welcome. Muslims should be carefully scrutinized
before they are allowed in. In other words,
Christians are better than Muslims. This may
sound like an over-simplification, but that is just
how it is. President Trump is likely to make the
United States more unpopular in the Muslim
world, damage established friendships and
promote a culture of hate that has proven a
threat to American foreign relations in parts of
the world.
American liberals are justifiably upset and angry.
President Trump’s policy moves and rhetoric
depart from the America they have known for the
past 50 years. But right now, America is so
divided, nobody can comfortably sit on the fence,
and that is why public opinion is so viciously
divided too. Trump addresses the fears of those
Americans who, like him, don’t want more
immigrants and asylum seekers. This is the
ultimate rise of American xenophobia and an
attempt to turn that country into “a camp of
saints.” But there are limits to nativism as seen
in Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints
(1973) and The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs.
The Environment (2011) by Lisa Park and David
Pellow.
But no matter the tone of global outrage, Donald
Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn. Mexico
has cancelled a meeting with Trump, a protest
calling for signatures to prevent his proposed
state visit to the UK has attracted over a million
signatures, Iran is threatening reciprocal action,
the entire Muslim world is outraged and inside
America, California is threatening to secede
because of Trump! And Trump? He wants to be
President of the United States, not President of
the world. He wants to serve the American people
who voted him into power, not some immigrants
coming from the slums of Africa, Asia, Latin
America and the Middle East. Across the world,
there are millions who look up to the United
States as the land of freedom. Trump is saying
America is no longer ready to be the world’s
Atlas nation. It is not just immigration that will
be affected: trade, aid, military relations as well.
This has created a regime of fear among many
who depend on the United States.
There are millions of Africans living in the United
States, particularly Nigerians. They don’t all have
the papers granting them the right of stay. There
are asylum seekers, refugees and many who are
still processing their residency papers. An
American for Americans only policy is likely to
place them at the risk of rejection and eventual
deportation. When you talk to some of them, you
can actually sense panic, fear, and despair. They
panic because America has become their adopted
home. It is their place of work, their source of
hope, and the best place in the world where they
are happiest.
They panic because their original homeland offers
them little hope. They don’t want to return to a
Nigeria where there is no regular power supply,
employment opportunities, good roads,
communications or transportation system. Living
in America confers a special status on them
among friends, family members and the
community at home. There are others who are
already naturalized Americans, and who may have
nothing to fear, and there are those Nigerians
who have helped to build America with their
talents and intellect, and who don’t really care on
what side of the bed Donald Trump is likely to
wake up tomorrow morning.
Then you have the big crowd of I-must-go-to-
America-by-force set of Nigerians who are daily
trooping to the American embassy in search of
visa. Since the Executive Order by President
Trump, that crowd has not been smiling at all. I
know many of our compatriots who have
suddenly become experts in analyzing American
immigration rules. Nigeria is not one of the seven
countries on the Trump list and the review and
restriction are supposed to last for 120 days, but
long-time US visa applicants in Nigeria believe
that what a typical American immigration officer
has actually been looking for is a President like
Trump. An inconsolable applicant tells me he is
no longer sure he will ever get a visa to the
United States.
I assured him that the world will always need
America and America will always need the world.
Isolationism discounts the ideal of an
interconnected global order. President Donald
Trump’s success will be determined in the long
run, not by the arrows he shoots in the
international arena from North Korea to China, to
Mexico and Somalia, but how well he fulfils the
promise to make America greater than he met it.
If they don’t want you to stay in America, come
home, please. Stay at home, e go better… or go
to Canada or Taiwan.