From Al-Jazeera (“Abdullah bin Zayed: Trump’s travel ban not Islamophobic”):
The United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister has said that US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries, which has triggered global outrage, is not Islamophobic and does not target any one religion.
Wait… what?
Trump’s order affecting nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen has sparked protests across the United States and beyond. Four US states have filed legal cases against the travel ban for alleged religious discrimination.
But Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, foreign minister of the UAE – a Muslim country – defended the ban on Wednesday.
He said that most Muslims and Muslim countries were not included in the ban.
The affected countries, he added, faced “challenges” that they needed to address.
Challenges? Oh… he must mean how the Obama Administration flagged these countries as having no (or barely functioning) governments, which engenders a whole host of problems for immigration officials in the U.S.
“The United States has taken a decision that is within the American sovereign decision,” he said at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the capital, Abu Dhabi.
“There are attempts to give the impression that this decision is directed against a particular religion, but what proves this talk to be incorrect first is what the US administration itself says … that this decision is not directed at a certain religion.”
Then, there is this jaw-dropper:
He separately said he wanted the US to give priority to Syrian Christians fleeing the conflict there.
Doesn’t this prominent Muslim figure from the UAE recognize the (fictional) “religious test” in the U.S. Constitution? And doesn’t he recognize the Zeroth Amendment, written by Emma Lazarus? Why, you’d almost think he believes the U.S. is (for all intents and purposes) a Christian country!
We also learn that other figures from the Gulf States support Trump’s temporary travel ban:
Some Gulf officials even backed it openly. Dhahi Khalfan, a senior Dubai police official, tweeted on Monday “complete support” for Trump’s ban. “Every country has the right to protect its security … Trump, what you’re doing is right.”
A cynic (or short-term-thinking liberal) would retort: ‘The Gulf States are only supporting the ban because they are essentially excluded from the ban!” But this does nothing to erase that fact that we now have Gulf State figures defending, in principle, Trump’s executive order.
The revolution doesn’t occur overnight.
And, again, we see the leaders of fellow Muslim countries understanding, to one degree or another, the rationality behind Trump’s action.
And once again, we see the most vociferous opponents not coming from the Muslim world outside the United States, but from liberal white ‘progressives’ inside the United States.
