Trump Trump

The American desire to metamorphose into an imagined past glory is not going to likely turn into an enchantment the dreamers are expecting.  

For one, the good ole’ days is a notion that was created through rhetoric and not based on facts.  America is a great country, but the thought that it was greater in the past is a concocted image. The ideal principle that the nation was built on, that is, the Constitution of the United States of America, was a document that meant white all along.  The inclusion of other races was an afterthought -- a move brought about by necessity not sincerity, accepted reluctantly and grudgingly, forced upon the losers by the victors. The North fought the racist South who saw blacks as less than human.  Such attitudes clearly have not changed today as much as we would like the world to believe, and laws cannot force people to alter their feelings.  Laws exist to maintain order -- to draw lines to make “good fences” – not good people. 

            America was a country that took a long time to see beyond color.  It has always been an America for the whites, not even Caucasians, since northern Indians from the subcontinent were denied the right to become citizens.  It was not for the Orientals:  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made that clear.  As late as 1942, similar racial sentiments motivated the issuance of Executive Order 9066 that interned over a hundred and fifty thousand Japanese. After all, this was a nation that lynched for sport and even had “hanging judges,” the most notorious of whom was from Fort Smith, Arkansas.  White women may not have had certain rights, but at least they did not have to bear the humiliation of colored people. Such examples, including personal accounts, are testimony to these attitudes towards others, and they have lingered and surfaced through history, and it has now culminated in a people showing in this election that they still feel the same way.

My focus here is not as much on the president-elect as it is on America itself.  Trump has made it clear to us as to who he is:  his attitude, opinion and position about issues, and maybe life itself, are apparent.  Yet, according to TIME, he won the election with the largest margin of victory in the electoral college of any Republican since 1988.  However, what is shocking is that even after having heard all his honest, unbridled feelings of dislike and disdain for certain people and religion, he got elected.  In covering this election, even shocked reporters were trying to put on a brave front in its aftermath; they, who had relied on polls and political pundits for a look into the immediate future, were thrown off course:  this was almost another Truman-Dewey scenario for them.  They appeared stunned -- uncomfortable and lost: they looked like deer caught in headlights; they are only now beginning to regain their composure: the trenchant analysis of Meet the Press and Dateline London still sound stiff and voluble since the election. They have lost their rhythm.

People did not care if Trump was condescending towards women or evaded taxes or that he insulted Hispanics or Muslims or manufactured facts as he went along -- he was voted in. He manipulated and fabricated statistics. We are not at all shocked to learn politicians lie.  It is troubling when so many are unaffected by it and are happy that he had done so very convincingly, and thus, rewarded him by voting him into office.  No people in recent times have been more pleased to have been lied to than Republican voters. Trump has set a precedent. Lying and manipulation is a winning formula.  He has proven that the art of exaggeration wins elections.  We can expect a more brazen attitude from politicians from here on out.  We will no longer know what to believe and what not to believe.  Since political correctness was abandoned during the campaign, let me “say it like it is”:  “No matter which way you cut it, it just doesn’t add up.”  What is apparent is that this long, seething, simmering racism has burst at the seams, and a two-term African-American president has stirred WASPs and WTs into a state of frenzy:  They are never going to let that happen again, and they are not going to let a woman into the White House -- unless it is a Trump-lass, who can run an equally repulsive campaign that can capture the hearts of bigots and dogmatists.  For that, at least the Republicans may have a greater claim to getting a woman president into the Oval Office – the likes of Palin, but maybe not as dim-witted, and if fully endorsed by Trump, it may just happen.  Secretary Clinton just did not win in the sympathy, the charm or the believability department.  The intelligence department was of no importance to the masses this time around or maybe from here on out.

What this election has said loud and clear to the world is that racism and xenophobia win elections.  It may be the 21^st century, but nothing much has changed in terms of racial sentiments in the USA.  Laws keep people in check; higher ideals do not.  This is a peremptory principle — incontrovertible.  When a politician says hateful things and is elected to power, he has grasped the true nature and feelings of a people.  A vote for Trump was not really a vote against Hillary, as the media would have us believe.  The argument is a cop out, a saving grace, a soothing balm in the face of an unacceptable, painful truth that America finds difficult to swallow:  underneath it all, it is blatantly racist.  The result of this election can only be explained if we allow that people were not disgusted by the openly bold display of racism.  If we are to say that the people were upset at career politicians and business as usual in the capital, then we have to concede that their anger found the rickety motion of the political wheel more offensive than the violation of values deemed sacred by America and the rest of the world:  the right to religion, the honor of a race, the dignity of women, and making an honest living. 

That which has driven people to vote for Trump is some misguided, delusional notion that he will be able to make America great again by removing that which they see as a menace in their eyes and mind.  We hope life in the States does not turn into a turkey shoot.  If half-baked policies and laws about illegal immigrants, Hispanics, Muslims, African-Americans and abortion are passed, the Second Amendment will facilitate, ensure and assure hell on the land of the free. The consequences are going to be devastating.  If Trump is going to continue to shoot his mouth off, he is also likely to shoot himself in the foot.  The making of America started out with lugubrious strokes, and it is planning to finish with a bolder hand and tawdrier colors.

            In both corrupt and less corrupt Muslim countries, this election will speak volumes of an unintended message: democracy does not work.  They will say that it ignores the will of the majority (popular vote).  It allows abuse; it promotes lying; it accepts and endorses lewd behavior.  These are not traits one should flaunt.  Trump’s intended blanket ban on Muslims entering the States will backfire:  those who develop a persecution complex will have increased sympathy for violent groups; they will have a greater reason to reject democracy altogether; they will reevaluate and reexamine the intent of America and all Western countries towards Muslim countries.  Just like police shootings of blacks will now raise more red flags than it has in the last couple of years, every engagement of America in any Muslim country will be suspect.  Muslims will be more easily convinced of the malfeasance of the American government.  Special interest groups will play this up and take advantage of the situation.  This is a president-elect for whom the Klan in North Carolina is organizing a parade.  It will not be difficult at all for detractors to embrace a message of ill intent of a president associated with such barbaric elements. The West will no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt in their dealings with the Middle East.  Though many have expressed suspicion of American motivation in other countries before, every action will now be fully scrutinized.

What Americans have voted for is to make the world a less safe place.  They have also voted to make America a less safe place.  America may have inadvertently started a trend for right wing parties to take center stage all over the white world.  It will embolden the likes of Pauline Hanson of Australia and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.  Marine Le Pen the fascist opposition leader of France sees Trump’s victory as a sign of her own.  These are promises of things to come in the white world.  By moving in this direction, they have lost their legitimacy to call for moderation in the Muslim world.

The next four years are going to prove to be tough; we will have to hunker down and weather whatever storms that come our way.  However America metamorphoses, the end result is going to be an ugly beast. 

                        PROFESSOR SAYYID AJMAL RAZAK AL-AIDRUS

                        The International Islamic University Malaysia

The writer lived in the States from 1979 to 1996.  He received all his tertiary education in Indiana.

                                    

Islam versus Taliban

The Taliban has been at it again:  most recently, murdering indiscriminately in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  A movement that has little tolerance for alternative opinions or positions, their answer to all opposition, verbal or otherwise, is brute force and suicide bombings.  The recruitment of young impressionable boys, sometimes mentally-challenged, has been part of their strategy for decades. 

Islam itself has to come up with answers to address the issue of suicide bombings, especially scholars from Pakistan and Afghanistan preferably not related to the government to give it credibility.  Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for the creation of such militant ideologies in the world, can also play a pivotal role in pointing out the absence of any precedence in Islam for suicide bombing.

  It is the least that the repressive Saudi government can do to undo the wrong that they have done in unleashing monsters in the world.

Media on Media

The recent phone hacking scandal that caused the shutdown of the 168-year old paper, The News of the World in London, has rocked the Western world, especially the United Kingdom and the United States. 

The UK is watching closely to see if this scandal, in which Prime Minister Cameron has found himself in the thick of things with almost amateurish decisions he made with regard to Coulson and Brooks, will be his undoing.  He may not come out of it unscathed, but most feel that after the damage is done, he will survive the crisis. 

Across the ocean, the Americans have called for a Congressional hearing to investigate allegations of phone hacking of family members of 9/11.  The Americans have stringent rules about spying on citizens in the United States, but not of foreigners in the country or Americans and non-Americans in foreign countries. 

The hue and cry in the United States is about protecting the rights of Americans rather than the right to privacy of citizens of the world.  In the days to come, it will be interesting  to see if a “Mediagate” is going to emerge from this, exposing many other media on both sides of the divide that have indulged in this act.  It remains to be seen if the media is going to report the wrongdoings of those in their own profession with the same degree of scrutiny.

To Purdah in Australia

The Australian government decided that police in the state of New South Wales will have the right to remove the purdah of a Muslim woman if they saw the individual as a potential threat.  Once the law is passed, authorities can under the pretext of threat violate the privacy and sanctity of a Muslim woman.

  Though Islamic law does not require a Muslim woman to wear the purdah (this is just the interpretation of certain fundamentalist Muslims), the issue is not about religion but freedom of choice, that is, the freedom of choice to dress in the manner that an individual chooses to or not to as in Twin Falls Resort, New South Wales, a nudist (or naturalist as they like to call themselves down-under) camp where one can bare it all. 

For one who does associate purdah with religion, asking to take off the purdah would be akin to taking off a “private” garment.  Once again, Western democracy appears not to have room for Islamic practices or principles of democracy itself when it comes to Muslims.

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The Nature of Muslim Politics

The Libyan, Syrian, Bahraini and Yemeni uprising clearly shows the Muslim world that their leaders are quite capable of shooting and maiming them at a moment’s notice or without missing a beat. 

Where are all the ayahs from the Quran and Hadith about the taking of a life now?  

Politics is politics, no matter how you cut it:  Muslim or non-Muslim.  It is an equal opportunity grim reaper. 

Muslim leaders, in the past few months, have shown that they are just as good as any butcher of people who have emerged in history. 

How can these leaders think that only they can govern or know what is good for the country or have the right to do away with the very people who had put them there?

  The answer is “Separation of ‘mosque’ and State” works for Muslims, too.

Barbaric Treatment

Two French journalists, Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, who were held hostage by the Taliban for 18 months together with their interpreter, Reza Din, were freed a couple of days ago. 

CNN coverage of the event talked about how remarkably good the journalists looked. The release did make for a good story, but it would have been better if it had been filled with accounts of water-boarding or bondage or “naked ridicule” by short, ugly women with menacing, bleating trained goats, ready to attack and brutalize.  

The journalists should be grateful that they were hostages of barbaric “Moslem” fundamentalists who are holding secret talks with the Americans on the future of Afghanistan. Things could have gotten really ugly if they had been caught by civilized American Abu Ghraib personnel of the female persuasion.