Trump and the 'Muslim Ban'. What it is, and what it isn’t.

Lately I find myself defending Donald Trump more often than I would have ever considered to be possible. It seems rather strange to me as I have never been a fan of the current US President. I remember the morning of November 9th as if it was yesterday, sitting in front of the TV, shaking my head in disbelief and horror. 

Of course his remarks on women, immigrants and political opponents during the presidential campaign where appalling. Most of what Mr Trump said and how he said it was childish and not worthy of a head of state, let alone the holder of the most powerful office in the world. But most of all, it were the policies he announced and his obviously unstable nature that led to the conclusion, that putting this man in the White House would lead to nothing short of a disaster.

In my lifetime no presidential candidate of the Democrats sparked as little excitement in me as Hillary Clinton but given the options I was sincerely hoping she would make it.

In the end, history and the American people decided otherwise. Donald Trump was sent to the white house to stir things up. ?Disrupt Washington!“ could have been his slogan (Maybe that sounded too much like Silicon Valley though, which had backed Hillary almost unanimously). 

And in the first few days of his Presidency, Mr Trump has stirred up the political scene quite a bit, nationally and internationally. To the delighting of his followers and the horror of his opponents, he started putting his campaign promises into practice from day one in office. He immediately started to implement even those campaign promises everyone held to populist exaggerations in order to fish for votes on the far right. 

Since then, he has signed various executive orders, pulled out of TPP, defunded international organizations that are involved in abortion, started planning for the border wall and eventually issued a moratorium on the intake of refugees as well as travel restrictions for people of 7 majority Muslim countries, soon to labeled by news outlets and politicians alike as the now infamous ?Muslim Ban‘.

Public outrage and false claims as a publicity stunt

For 90 days, travelers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia are not allowed to enter the United States. I consider this to be a mistake in many ways. What it is obviously not though, is a ban on Muslims entering the country. Currently there are 1.600.000.000 Muslims in the world. The seven countries affected, combined add up to about 200 million people of all religions, with more than 90 per cent of them Muslim. This makes about 12 per cent of the global population of Muslim faith. 

Meanwhile 40 majority Muslim countries stay unaffected. Among the countries not affected by the travel ban are also the 5 countries with the biggest populations of Islamic faith Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Nigeria and Bangladesh (number 7,8 and 9 aren’t either). 

Of course the Trump administration can hardly complain about the public calling it a Muslim ban, since it was Mr Trump himself who called for such a measure during the campaign. I find it remarkable though, that politicians and even heads of states like Germany’s Angela Merkel jump on that wagon, to exploit this term for their own purpose. Commentators where quick to say that this ban will only turn more Muslims against the US and thus harm national security. In fact this is exactly what people are promoting by falsely labeling this as a ban on Muslims: The sentiment, that the United States are at war with Islam itself.

Again, I think these temporary travel restrictions are a mistake and send out a terrible message to the world and also the US’s allies like Iraq. Its rash implementation has put many people in extremely difficult situations and possibly ruined lives. The vast majority of those affected are good and honest citizens and do not deserve to be excluded because of their origin. Restricting people from entering a country based on their religion is anti liberal, anti constitutional and anti democratic. Everybody who believes in democracy and basic human rights should oppose such a measure at any means. But again, this not what is happening. Many heartbreaking stories have come up in the wake of this executive action but it turns into a sad parody when Chuck Schumer cries on live TV about this terrible injustice. An act so fake and calculated, that it was only topped by his words during Trump’s inauguration ceremony where he spoke about a ?rapid changing economy that benefits too few“ (In case you are at loss at the moment Chuck Schumer is a New York senator / Wall Street lobbyist who has blocked any reform or financial regulation within the democratic party, laying the groundwork for the global economic recession of 2008. He is also a famously staunch defender of low taxation for hedge fund and private equity managers). 

If you label this order an unconstitutional act, as racism or religious prosecution, it is easy for a politician to express public outrage and get sympathies. The same goes for Angela Merkel, who protested against this ban on grounds of religious beliefs but doesn’t seem to have mixed feelings about her own refugee policy. After completely opening the borders in 2015, she has taken a 180° turn and forged a pact with Turkey’s authoritarian Recep Tayep Erdogan keeping Syrian refugees behind their borders at gunpoint. The Turkish border guards have however proven already that they are not to shy to use firearms against civilians, if they see it as necessary.

So what does the executive order mean for the stability of the middle east and the security of the USA?

Escalating tensions with Iran and alienating the ally Iraq

If you take a close look at the countries involved, you get a list of failed states and repressive theocracies. Sudan is an islamist dictatorship, that has been in a state of civil war, bordering on genocide for almost fifteen years now. Iraq’s territory is in large parts occupied by fighters of ISIS, as a consequence of a sectarian civil war that has started with the US-led invasion in 2003. Syria’s civil war is the biggest catastrophe happening in the world right now and the atrocities committed by radical islamists as well as the government leave the international spectators speechless. Yemen is still in a state of civil war, despite an ongoing massive and violent intervention by the Saudi neighbors. In Libya, which has been so heroically freed from Gaddafi’s dictatorship and then abandoned completely by the the UK, France and the US, the western observer watches in horror how Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are fighting for control over the country. And finally, Somalia has been a showcase model for a failed state for decades now. 

The one country that sticks out of this list, is Iran. Agreed, the Islamic Republic is an authoritarian theocracy and sponsor of terror in large parts of the world. But in many ways this is also true for Saudia Arabia, which is famously excluded on that list. With the difference being, that the Shia extremists sponsored by Iran are fighting their battle mainly within the middle east, whereas Sunni extremists that get their resources mainly from the Gulf States, (all of which are exempt in the travel ban) are taking the fight to Europe and the US’s doorstep. In any case the Trump administration has failed to explain the connection between the stability of these countries and the number of extremists leaving them. As far as we know there is none. 

Iran however, is still the arch enemy of two of the closest allies of the United States: Israel and Saudi Arabia. We don’t know Mr Trump’s stance on Saudi Arabia yet, but with respect to Israel he has made it clear that he is going to run a much friendlier course with the Jewish State than the Obama administration. The slow progress towards normalizing relations between the US and Iran, could however come quickly to a halt under President Trump. Israel sees itself severely threatened by the growing Iranian influence in neighboring Syria. Seeing what quarrel has resulted from a growing Iranian influence in the much smaller Lebanon, they have every right to be worried. 

And finally and maybe most importantly business interests come into play. Donald Trump wants to make America independent from foreign oil imports. However, all big oil-friendly policies in the US are in vain if the global prices stay low or fall even further. A certain price level is necessary to make oil production from tar sands and fracking profitable. And price spike is not necessarily to be expected if Iran, the country with the fourth biggest oil reserves in the world gets unlimited access to the world’s markets. At the moment we don’t know the underlying assumptions and strategies of this executive order and can just speculate. We can however, see what the order can and can’t do. It can further alienate the US and the current ally Iraq and fuel the divide between the US an Iran, probably pushing Iraq further into the arms of its eastern neighbor. The bilateral relations with any of the other countries however is of little concern for the administration. As mentioned Yemen, Somalia and Libya currently have no functioning government and the relations betweenWashington and Damascus, respectively Khartoum, are already as bad as it gets. What this order cannot do, is keep Muslims or the majority of Muslims outside of the United States. And it is also highly doubtful that it will have much of an effect on national security. Regarding this, Germany is often mentioned as an example not to follow. Since opening its borders to a huge number of foreign nationals in 2015 Germany has suffered several attempted and several successful terrorist attacks, deeply shattering the confidence of German citizens in the governments ability to guarantee security. This however is much less a consequence of the intake of middle eastern refugees per se. Islamist extremists where however able to infiltrate Germany because it let people in completely unvetted and unregistered. This option was never considered under the Obama administration and it will certainly not be considered by the current administration. 

What this executive order will do without a doubt however is escalate tensions. It is going to further aggravate the tense political situation in the region and it will further escalate the existing tensions between the US and its allies and most importantly the people in the Middle East. The ban on Muslims has been brought up by Donald Trump himself. The Jinn has left its bottle and those who unleashed it seem to be the least capable of putting it back in.