Vox News :
ISIS has been trying for years to convince Muslims around the world that the West – and especially the United States – is at war with Islam. President Donald Trump’s new executive order on immigration will make it much easier for it to make its case.
The executive order – which bans all immigrants
and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days, bans all refugee admissions for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and puts Christian refugees at the front of the line – plays right into the ISIS narrative.
No immigrants from any of the seven countries on the list – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia – have killed Americans in terrorist attacks in the US. Not one. What immigrants and refugees from most of those countries are doing, however, is fleeing repression, violence, and war – in the case of Iraq and Yemen, wars started or supported by the US itself.
By blocking refugees from several Muslim countries and prioritizing Christian ones, the Trump administration seems to be sending the message that the US doesn’t care about Muslim suffering. ISIS propagandists couldn’t have said it better themselves.
ISIS’s vision of the US war on Islam has been a hard sell – until now
ISIS (and al-Qaeda before it) has long focused its propaganda on a putative laundry list of crimes the US and its Western allies have supposedly committed against Muslims around the world. It seeks to convince Muslims living in the West that their governments are against them, and that they must therefore take up arms and defend Islam against these attempts to destroy it.
For instance, in one issue of its online propaganda magazine Dabiq, ISIS warned that, “Muslims in the crusader countries [i.e., the West] will find themselves driven to abandon their homes … as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands.”
The biggest problem with that argument is that, while the US is involved in several wars in Muslim-majority countries – and does support dictators who repress Islamist political parties in several others – the US is a pluralistic, liberal democracy where people of all faiths (and no faith) are free to practice their beliefs as they see fit, with very few restrictions.
ISIS has been trying for years to convince Muslims around the world that the West – and especially the United States – is at war with Islam. President Donald Trump’s new executive order on immigration will make it much easier for it to make its case.
The executive order – which bans all immigrants
and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days, bans all refugee admissions for 120 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and puts Christian refugees at the front of the line – plays right into the ISIS narrative.
No immigrants from any of the seven countries on the list – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia – have killed Americans in terrorist attacks in the US. Not one. What immigrants and refugees from most of those countries are doing, however, is fleeing repression, violence, and war – in the case of Iraq and Yemen, wars started or supported by the US itself.
By blocking refugees from several Muslim countries and prioritizing Christian ones, the Trump administration seems to be sending the message that the US doesn’t care about Muslim suffering. ISIS propagandists couldn’t have said it better themselves.
ISIS’s vision of the US war on Islam has been a hard sell – until now
ISIS (and al-Qaeda before it) has long focused its propaganda on a putative laundry list of crimes the US and its Western allies have supposedly committed against Muslims around the world. It seeks to convince Muslims living in the West that their governments are against them, and that they must therefore take up arms and defend Islam against these attempts to destroy it.
For instance, in one issue of its online propaganda magazine Dabiq, ISIS warned that, “Muslims in the crusader countries [i.e., the West] will find themselves driven to abandon their homes … as the crusaders increase persecution against Muslims living in Western lands.”
The biggest problem with that argument is that, while the US is involved in several wars in Muslim-majority countries – and does support dictators who repress Islamist political parties in several others – the US is a pluralistic, liberal democracy where people of all faiths (and no faith) are free to practice their beliefs as they see fit, with very few restrictions.
