Trump bans Muslims. Oh No!

By: jamesbaxley

The President of the United States has banned Muslims. The reasoning behind the temporary ban is for the safety of Americans, exemptions though, would be handled on a case-by-case basis. 

Donald Trump is banning Muslims? He's an animal!

Oh wait. That was the Democratic president Jimmy Carter. In 1980, Carter banned Iranian Muslims from entering the U.S.  Just as Trump has said his ban was to protect Americans, Carter’s ban was, in essence to protect Americans also.

Carter and his administration didn’t want to see Americans who lived and worked in the Middle-East end up like the 52 diplomats held captive at the American embassy. The diplomats and citizens held by militants in Tehran for 444 days, from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 were the result of the U.S.'s involvement in foreign affairs.

Donald Trump has talked several times about the hatred among Muslims around the world towards Americans. His job is to protect Americans.

“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”

Trump's sentiment does not differ much from Theodore Roosevelt’s thoughts on the matter a century earlier. In Roosevelt’s 1905 State of the Union Address, he had spoken of the need “to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens.” Roosevelt viewed Islam as “enemies of civilization.”

America first?

The executive order signed by Trump is a 90-day ban requires a review every 30 days on travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Carter's ban had exemptions “for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons.” Trump’s ban exempts foreign nationals if it's in the national interest. Exemptions would be in order for the diplomats of the seven countries singled out by Trump's executive order.

President Theodore Roosevelt indirectly banned Muslims by prohibiting immigration to the U.S. of anyone “persons who admit their belief in the practice of polygamy.” The Immigration Act of 1891 had merely banned polygamists but Roosevelt expanded on the 1891 Act.

The core of both Carter’s and Trump’s reasoning is the safety of American’s, as for Roosevelt’s reasoning? There were several events in the 19^th century which influenced Roosevelt’s reasoning. 

At the turn of the 19^th century, fighting and diplomacy was taking place between the U.S. and the Barbary states of North Africa. The conflict between these two states, the U.S. and the Barbary States has become known as the Barbary Wars. 

The Barbary pirates' routinely hijacked American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea, took their goods, and enslaved American crew members (a key tenant of Islam). 

Americans had just fought its first war against each other, the Utah War. The Utah War was an armed confrontation between Mormon pioneers in the Utah Territory and the armed forces of the U.S. government from 1857 to 1858 against polygamy. The rest of American society rejected polygamy and viewed it as a form of slavery. 

In 1861, America’s Civil War began. The deadliest war in America’s history was fought in theory to abolish slavery. The Civil War, more people died than were freed. Leading up to the Immigration Act of 1891, America had a long century of fighting against slavery. 

Americans viewed polygamy as a form of slavery and they defended this view against the Church of Latter Day Saints; polygamy is so ubiquitous at the heart of Islam.  As we have seen with ISIS, Islamic violence is driven by the base need to enslave and oppress, and the ultimate enslavement is polygamy. The events of the 19th-century which led to the immigration Act of 1891.

Donald Trump’s executive order strikes at the heart of terrorism that other Western leaders are too blind to see: the declaration of war on western civilization.

Barack Obama cannot say Islamic Terrorism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel invites nearly a million mostly male refugees from third-world, Muslim-majority countries. Neither one can figure out why an influx of German women are being molested and raped, at least they won’t say it out loud.

To quote Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow, “When you close your eyes to one evil, you come to accept them all.”