US President Donald Trump's
National Security Advisor HR McMaster has announced that US President will
deliver "an inspiring, direct speech on the need to confront radical
ideology and his hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam".
Donald Trump is scheduled to
attend the US-Arab-Islamic Summit in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh on May
20-21 where, apart from delivering his vision about Islam, a religion that he
used to slam during his campaign days, he would also make a strong pitch for a
$100 billion arms deal with the Saudis.
This will mark Trump's first
foreign visit as well as his first outreach to the major Muslim countries of
the world. The tour itinerary of his first international visit, spread over
eight days, also includes Jerusalem, Belgium, the Vatican and Italy.
But will it work, given
Trump's streak of controversies with Islam, his disdain for the second largest
religion of the world? Can he inspire peace when he carries a baggage of
contempt?
Or will it be another badly
executed move by Trump which will generate even greater a controversy like the
ongoing row over Trump revealing highly classified intelligence on the Islamic
State to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
The row has generated such an intense debate in the US that Trump’s NSA had to
come forward to defend him last evening and CIA Director Mike Pompeo is going
to brief the US Senate Intelligence Committee on the matter. And the US media
has again started debating if there are possibilities emerging of impeaching President
Donald Trump.
Trump has continued with his
controversial views about Islam even after winning the US Presidential
Election. He had taken oath on January 20 this year and within first four
months of his term, he has tried twice to impose restrictions on Muslims from
entering the United States. He first presented an executive order, banning
travellers from seven Muslim majority nations, i.e., Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Yemen and Sudan. He also suspended the US immigration programme and
put an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. When the US courts banned it, his
administration reworded the order with cosmetic measures, dropped Iraq from the
list and issued it again. The US courts again banned the order expressing their
strong disapproval of the racial and discriminatory bias behind the order.
And the court observations
were largely based on Donald Trump's past views about Muslims and Islam that he
exhorted one after the other.
In a December 2015 campaign
rally after the San Bernardino shooting incident, he had said, “Donald J. Trump
is calling for a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is
going on.”
The statement that was later
removed from his official campaign website further said, “According to Pew
Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large
segments of the Muslim population.”
A month before that, in
November 2015, he had blamed Muslims for cheering the bombing of the World
Trade Centre, “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New
Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World
Trade Centre came down.”
Donald Trump, during his
campaign days, had floated the idea of a nationwide database of Muslims. It was
ridiculous, humiliating, discriminatory and racial and was widely criticised
but Trump didn’t budge from his stand. He would speak on “how Islam hated them
(the Americans)” and he would say he was going to see his Muslim ban plan
implemented once he got elected. His Muslim ban idea later got the angle of
extreme vetting, an intense scrutiny of Muslims before entering the US.
It is through the route of
extreme vetting that Donald Trump, after becoming the US President, tried to
impose his idea of Muslim and immigration ban with his failed executive orders.
After passing his first executive order on travel ban, Trump had tweeted,
“Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is
about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!”And Trump did
not like the US courts coming in his way of doing things. He expressed his
anger and displeasure by comparing the US judicial system to that of the third
world countries.
It is ironical that Trump has
chosen a Middle East country for his first international visit, a region that
he believes has executed large number of Christians. And this he had said as
recently as in January this year, a week after the inauguration of his
presidency. He tweeted, “Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in
large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!”
Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
Christians in the Middle-East
have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!
8:33 PM - 29 Jan 2017
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/825721153142521858
So, every eye will be on
Donald Trump when he delivers his vision for Islam in a Middle East country, in
the presence of the heads of state of many other Middle East nations. It will
be interesting to see how direct he sounds in inspiring a community that has
traditionally been targeted by him.
©SantoshChaubey