Trump's America Shutting Out Muslim Refugees

Only 20,918 refugees have so far been admitted to the US in fiscal year 2018, despite the cap being set at 45,000. Of those admitted, Muslim refugees have been hit the hardest with their share dropping to 14.5%, the lowest since 2001. At the same time, the Christian refugees share rose to nearly 71%, the highest since 2001, according to data compiled by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This data provides incontrovertible evidence of U.S. President Donald J. Trump's Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Turkey is the largest and Pakistan is the second largest host country for refugees worldwide. Turkey has nearly 3.5 million refugees mostly from Syria. Pakistan has 1.4 million refugees mainly of Afghan origin. Germany is the only western country that shows up among the top 10 host countries for refugees. Most of the rest are Muslim majority countries.

The number of Muslim refugees admitted into the U.S. dropped from more than 9,000 in the 2017 fiscal year to fewer than 2,000 with less than a month left in FY 2018 — an 80% drop, according to Axios:

Myanmar: A majority of Muslim refugees accepted into the U.S. in FY 2018 have come from Myanmar, where thousands of Muslim-majority Rohingya have been killed in an ethnic cleansing and hundreds of thousands have fled.

Somalia: The number of refugees admitted from the Muslim-majority, African nation of Somalia has dropped by 96% compared to last fiscal year. For no known reasons, the White House expressed particular concern over allowing refugees from Somalia into the U.S., former chief of the refugee affairs division at USCIS Barbara Stack told Zoe Chace in the latest episode of This American Life.

The year of Islamophobia began in earnest on January 20, 2017 with the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump who called for "total and complete shutdown" of  Muslims entering the United States during his successful electoral campaign. Among the first executive orders he signed was a "Muslim Ban" from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Then came an avalanche of a large number of Islamophobic tweets and retweets from Trump's twitter account. Some recent Trump retweets were of tweets from Britain First's Jayda Fransen. These tweets and retweets were swiftly denounced by top British and Dutch officials. Trump did not apologize.

Trump developed a pattern of using terror attacks to tweet against Muslims while ignoring similar or worse terror attacks by others.

Trump closed the year with recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a recognition that prior US administrations had withheld pending negotiations and final settlement of the issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

Only 20,918 refugees have so far been admitted to the U.S., despite the cap being set at 45,000 for fiscal year 2018. Of those admitted, Muslim refugees have been hit the hardest with their share dropping to 14.5% while the Christian refugees share rose to nearly 71%, according to data compiled by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). This data provides incontrovertible evidence of U.S. President Donald J. Trump's Islamophobia and xenophobia. The simultaneous rise of Neo Nazis in the West and the Hindu Nazis in India represents a very serious and growing threat to world peace. Their combined menace can lead to further global instability and increased violence if these trends are not halted and reversed soon. I hope good sense prevails among the voters in these countries to pull the world back from the brink of human catastrophe.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Hindu Nationalists Love Nazis

Islamophobia Goes Mainstream in 2017

A Conversation With White Nationalist Jared Taylor on Race in America

Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

Modi and Trump

Anders Breivik: Islamophobia in Europe and India

Hindu Nationalism Goes Global

Hindutva: The Legacy of the British Raj

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Comment by Riaz Haq on April 19, 2020 at 7:29am

#Trump tweets #socialdistancing enforced differently at mosques & churches. #Muslims calls remarks "insulting and frustrating on the eve of Ramadan … our president chooses to use his energy and platform to amplify the hateful words" of the original tweet."https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-04-18-20-intl/index.html

President Donald Trump said Saturday that there "could be a difference” in how authorities enforce social distancing guidelines at mosques versus how they do at churches.

This was in a response to a question regarding a post by conservative author and political commentator Paul E. Sperry he retweeted today.


Paul Sperry
@paulsperry_
Let's see if authorities enforce the social-distancing orders for mosques during Ramadan (April 23-May 23) like they did churches during Easter


Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, called Trump’s remarks "insulting and frustrating on the eve of Ramadan … our president chooses to use his energy and platform to amplify the hateful words" of the original tweet."

"As is often the case, the President is yet again stoking anti-Muslim hate and sowing division at a time when he is failing to do his job," Khera said.

Asked if he thought mosques might not follow the social distancing guidelines, Trump responded, "I don't think that at all. I'm somebody who believes in faith. It matters not what your faith is. But politicians treat different faiths differently. I don't know what happened with our country. But the Christian faith is treated much differently than it was, and I think it's treated unfairly."

The retweet ignores the fact that President Trump is pushing for states to ease social distancing guidelines if they are ready to do so, and for weeks has been pushing for some of those restrictions to be lifted by May 1. Ramadan will be observed between April 23 and May 23 this year.

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