Muslim Ban and other discriminative Policies by Trump… how can we make a change in next Presidential Election.

 

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the U.S. of America has many controversial policies that forced many Americans especially, the Muslim Americans to feel insecure and threatened. Not only Muslim Americans, Hispanic community is also being targeted continuously by Trump’s discriminative policies. His proposed campaign policies of a Muslim Ban, building wall against immigrants, vetting etc., has received tremendous amount of negative reactions from many people, especially from the Democrats and even from some people from the Republicans side. After he won the presidency on November 8th, 2016, he began implementing his policies after few days. The Ban on seven predominantly Muslim Countries was a significant one. Even though these policies are not really debated about in the politic world nowadays, but they have left the elements which resulted in increase in the hate crime against minorities and also islamophobia. Donald Trump’s ban on Muslims is a violation of human rights and discriminatory against a certain group of people which is not justified at any circumstances.

President Donald trump assumed office on January 10th, 2017. Shortly after few days later he enacted the ban on seven predominant Muslim nations in the middle east. “The most pernicious aspect of profiling and targeting the Muslim citizens of the seven nations in the EO travel ban is the way that it normalized prejudice and gave license to hateful rhetoric and violent extremists.” (Line 47, Hanadi Al Samman). The above quote can be perfectly verified by the white nationalist which proves that Trumps nationalistic rhetorics is emboldening and giving rise to hateful and extremist groups in the United States.

The rise of Islamophobia has affected Muslim women even more than Muslim men. “Chief among the targets of this Islamophobic tide are Muslim women identifiable to the public as Muslims because they wear hijabs.” (Line 11, Amaney A. Jamal). Muslim women are more likely to be target of hate and bigotry because of their outwardly appearance more so than Muslim men. They are the biggest victims of Trump’s hateful rhetorics.

The reason Muslim women are the primary target of hate speech is because they are different from the mainstream American women. “She remains a victim of “Americanness gone wrong” and is dependent on an “American ideal” for her survival.” (Line 51, Amaney A. Jamal). Islamophobes don’t consider Muslim women as part of mainstream American society because of their foreign looks, clothing and lifestyle. And on top of that throughout history and many societies have blamed minorities for their own failure. For example, Germany and the Jews in the 20th Century.

Trump’s presidential campaign was mostly based on stereotypes and heavy generalizations against various groups. Like, he called Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers which is a massive generalization. He made similar generalizations against Muslim immigrants too. “The increasing prevalence of anti-Muslim rhetoric and action, the unabashed reassertion of white male power, and recent attempts to erode the rights of women, queers, immigrants, and people of color have serious consequences for our research, teaching, and engagement with public debates and communities.” (Line 1-5, Gokariksel). It is true that there are negative practices in all cultures. But those practices are done by very few people and are definitely not representative of entire community. This shows Trump’s biasness against non-European cultures.

Besides the racism and Islamophobia spread by Trump and his political party, there have various measures for counter movements of resistance. “Resistance movements against the kind of white male dominance that Trump’s presidency represents and has been trying to restore have embraced Muslims alongside other maligned groups (immigrants, brown, black, native, Latino, queer, women).” (Line 41, Gokariksel). On the bright side, many Americans have rejected right wing ideologies of intolerance and bigotry and embraced the beauty of diversity and multiculturalism. The most prime example is the women’s march led by Linda Sarsour, A Palestinian American human rights activist, in 2017. In that march, Americans opposed Islamophobia and racism and spread the virtues of tolerance, Acceptance and equality between genders and races.

Now, let’s talk about his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”. It is basically another way of saying make America “white” again. “In 2016, demographers pointed to declines in white Americans ‘life expectancies, with anxiety and depression-driven drug over-doses as a contributing factor (Tavernise, 2016), one of many symp-toms of the erosion of the white middle class (Thompson, 2016).” (Line 38, Gokariksel and Smith). There is a fear among the white community that because of immigration from non-European countries, there culture might erode. Trump used these irrational fears to fill his vote banks by appealing to these people with promises that he will bring back America’s “glorious” days back.

Even though, Trump’s ban was prevented from being enacted he later tried to push fir anther ban on Muslims. “President Trump’s second attempt at a “Muslim ban,” more than twice as long as the first and more narrowly tailored, prohibits people from six countries—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—from immigrating or traveling to the United States for 90 days.” (Line 1, Hing). Similar efforts for building border walls are also being pushed for.

Muslims are not the only one who are affected by the election of 2016. Other minorities like Hispanics, Asians and blacks are also heavily affected. Innocent black men have been shot by Police. “The vast majority of incidents reported – 206 – were anti-immigrant, followed by anti-African American violence. Fifty-one incidents of anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported.” (Line 7, Sohrabji). Cops have been called on black men for no apparent reason. Racial profiling of people of color have been dramatically increased and hate crimes have been on the rise at an exponential rate.

In conclusion, next Presidential Election is taking place on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 and I want citizens of United States of America to think about how peace, love, harmony and tolerance can be promoted if the general American public unite together regardless of skin color, race, ethnicity, religion and vote for a better leader this time. We don’t want to choose a leader who spread hate, violence and bigotry among the people who are different in looks, cast, creed and race. We don’t want any president who causes subsequent rise to islamophobia and rampant racism in the United States like Trump has. His hate speeches against Muslims and other people of color in the country has given rise to a new divide in the country which has never been seen since the 1960s.  But these things should not be tolerated and should neither be promoted as they can play a major role in spreading hatred among different groups in this diverse American society. Vote wisely on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 because your decision reflects the future of our country.

Work Cited

Jamal, A. A. “Trump(ing) on Muslim Women: The Gendered Side of Islamophobia.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 13 no. 3, 2017, pp. 472-475. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/677747.

Al-Samman, H. “Invading Muslim Bodies in the Era of Trump.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 13 no. 3, 2017, pp. 483-485. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/677750.

Gökariksel, B. “The Body Politics of Trump’s “Muslim Ban”.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 13 no. 3, 2017, pp. 469-471. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/677746.

Hing, Julianne. “New Ban, No Relief.” The Nation, vol. 304, no. 10, 2017, pp. 4–4.

Gökarıksel, and Smith. “&Quot;Making America Great Again&Quot;?: The Fascist Body Politics of Donald Trump.” Political Geography, vol. 54, 2016, pp. 79–81.

Sohrabji, Sunita. “701 Hate Crimes Reported Since Election.” India – West, 2016, pp. A1,A22.

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