Trump and his supporters are crowing that we need to prevent Muslims from entering the US, because we have no way of knowing which of them are terrorists.
This makes me sick.
If you support blocking muslims from entering a store or from even coming to the US, ask yourself this: would you support similar restrictions on Christians?
Because guess what? There are also Christian terrorists. In the Central African Republic, Christians have been attacking and killing Muslims for years. In Uganda, the “Lord’s Resistance Army” is a band of Christian terrorists.
In India, the National Liberation Front is a band of Christian terrorists who threaten those who are not Christian.
Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Militias have killed thousands of Palestinian refugees–not in battle as equals, but in attacks on refugee camps.
In the US, Christians such as Eric Robert Rudolph and Tim McVeigh, as well as groups like the Christian Identity Movement and its associated subgroups. “The CIM is made up of various Christian terrorist organizations, like Americans Promise Ministries, who are responsible for terrorist attacks and bank robberies; the aforementioned Aryan Nations; the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord; the Oklahoma Constitution Militia; and the South African Groups that were behind the 2002 Soweto bombings” (AATP.org).
And no, you don’t get to say things like “not all Christians are like that” or “they’re not real Christians.” Well, you can say them, but they’re meaningless. The best you can say is that they’re not your kind of Christian, or that you don’t accept their beliefs as your own (like the CIM’s belief that non-Caucasians don’t have souls and therefore cannot be saved).
Well, guess what, Internet? Just like most Christians aren’t terrorists, most Muslims aren’t terrorists. In fact, the vast majority of Muslims say ISIS is not representative of their religious beliefs.
Trump’s people keep using the Internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII as a justification for this idea, but they’re ignoring perhaps the most important aspects of the internment:
1. The FBI informed the President that there was no reason to lock up the Japanese-Americans, and he did it anyway because he considered it better to assuage the groundless fears of white folks than to do what was right.
2. The Supreme Court ruled the Internment unconstitutional.
Even as an atheist who thinks belief in a deity is kind of silly, there is no basis on which I would agree with denying people entry into the US based on their religion. The very concept is anti-American and violates our core principles.