So, Donald Trump’s supporters are racist.
Or, er, well, religious bigots.
Or something.
So runs the logic from the left and some of the right regarding Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration. Josh Earnest declared Trump “disqualified” from the White House – an un-American notion if ever there was one – because of his position, stating that Trump would be incapable of fulfilling an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution.
That’s nonsensical but typical of the left.
The New York Daily News, in its continuing quest for relevance, printed a cover with a cartoon of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty; they then compared him to Hitler. Of course.
The least funny show on television, Trevor Noah’s Daily Show labeled Trump “white ISIS,” with correspondent Hasan Minhaj explaining that “moderate white conservatives” should denounce Trump – pretty much every conservative has, of course – and snarking, “it’s just easier on my brain to be irrationally afraid of an entire group of people.”
Never mind that Trump isn’t proposing beheading Muslims, as ISIS is doing. Nor does Trump propose violating the rights of American citizens (though he verged on that idiocy on the day of his original pronouncement). And, for the moment, ignore Trump’s proposal itself, which as I explained two days ago, does not work practically or ethically.
Focus instead on the notion, pushed by the left, that anyone who is wary of Muslim immigration is Islamophobic. Here’s the truth: for the Obama administration, The New York Daily News, and the clods who write The Daily Show, even Ted Cruz or Rand Paul proposals to curb immigration from terrorism-tolerating countries would be “Islamophobic.”
And some top Republicans are lending credibility to this foolishness. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan didn’t merely stop at condemning Trump’s plan. He then stated, unfactually, “The vast, vast, vast, vast majority [of Muslims]…believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights.”
Um, no.
If we’re talking about global Islamic populations, that is certainly untrue, as I’ve repeatedly detailed in the past. You can watch my video on that matter here:
Trump’s blanket Muslim immigration ban is irrational because it assumes that no Muslim can be Westernized, or at least that we can’t verify in any real way that a Muslim has been Westernized; more, it assumes that we don’t suffer a real intelligence cost by alienating all Muslims. That’s not smart.
But it is not irrational to suggest that Islamic practice heightens the statistical possibility of allegiance to an ideology that conflicts with Western thought. Statistics show that significant percentages of religious Muslims believe things that conflict at their root with Western notions of freedom. That’s not a chimera, nor is it bigotry. That’s reality.
But the left wishes to define away reality: now any concern about unvetted Muslims entering the United States is racism (no, it isn’t, because Islam isn’t a race) or irrational xenophobia. Reality is Islamophobic, according to the left and the more politically correct and ignorant commentators on the right. According to University of California at Berkeley Center for Race and Gender Studies, Islamophobia is based on “prevailing attitudes” that incorporate beliefs such as:
Islam does not share common values with other major faiths…Islam as a religion is inferior to the West. It is archaic, barbaric, and irrational…Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism…Islam is a violent political ideology.
To believe any of these things, according to the left, makes you a bigot. But Islam does not share many values with other major faiths – in fact, most major non-Judeo-Christian faiths share few values. Regardless of what you think of Islam as a religion, Islamic civilization is inferior to the West, and is generally far more archaic and barbaric than the West. Islam may not be a violent political ideology, but the Islamic world certainly contains a virulent violent political ideology.
Rational people worry about unvetted Muslim immigration because rational people question whether Islam has something to do with radical Islam. They’re not fools for asking the question.
The left takes solace in the #YouAintNoMuslimBruv hashtag that trended on Twitter after a Muslim stabbed three people at an East London subway stop, and a passerby shouted “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv.” To pretend that the shouting Muslim quashes the threat of the stabbing Muslime is asinine.
Regardless what you think of Donald Trump, it’s gross to label all those who support Trump’s plan bigots. A far more likely explanation: they’re rational people with rational fears about radical Islam and its roots in Islam, and they’re embracing an irrational plan to deal with those fears. That’s bad politics, not bigotry.