Every action has a reaction, but every reaction has a chain reaction. America’s liberal globalists are shell-shocked over the US Supreme Court upholding President Donald Trump’s travel ban on Muslims—an outrage that has found echoes in other countries, including India. Yet even the US judiciary feels Trump has a valid point.
Maybe he does, going by the European and British experience. The dictum of Islamophobes that all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims, is not true. But most terrorists today are Muslims. This fear propelled Trump into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But more than fear is the genuine alarm that the American way of life is being disrupted through an Islamic cultural invasion. The wave of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East who brought their religious and social values to Europe and Britain cauterised their culture from Westernisation while enjoying the economic opportunities in their new countries.
Unlike Hindus, Jews and Sikhs, Islam is a vehemently proselytising religion, with conversion at the core of its faith, like its elder sibling Christianity. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for her countrymen to embrace Muslims because it was Germany’s Islam. She was speaking from the post-1945 European perception of an inclusive society, a mistake the British made until it became too late as Mohammed became the most common name in the UK. And there is no Brexit for Mohammed.
The Christian population is decreasing in Europe where the average Muslim woman has 2.6 children, more 1.6 by the average non-Muslim woman. Senior British politician Nigel Farage hit the nail on the head when he said, “The problem with multiculturalism is that it leads to divided communities. It’s quite different to multi-racialism.” According to a UK think-tank, the number of sharia courts in London have increased, with over 100 of them officially functioning in the city.
This fear of multiculturalism is echoed by a growing number of Americans. The perception that Hillary Clinton was a crook helped Trump win, but his jingoism could help him win a second term. According to a Pew Research Center poll, the share of American adults converting to Islam is 23 percent of the US Muslim population, while only six percent of Christians are new converts. Over the recent decades, the American Muslim population has been growing at around 1,00,000 a year. The exception that begs the question is the exclusion of Pakistan from Trump’s ban list while most of the Muslims who denounced Islam after migration to the US are Iranians (22 percent) since the majority had sought political refuge from the Ayatollah regime.
Immigration is the controversial narrative polarising the world; and the US the most. The economic advantage of immigration is being outweighed by the fear of cultural corruption. Trump is criticised for negating the Statue of Liberty’s cardinal principle of America as a shelter for outsiders. But that America was racist, where Barack Obama could never have become President. It will be impossible for Donald Trump to return his country to those dark centuries. But he is doing right by his country, strengthening the industry, military and creating more jobs for Americans. Trump’s America is black and white—for the Americans, by the Americans, of the Americans. But their colour is white more than black.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com