Daily Times

With the kind of steps that the new US President, Donald Trump, is taking, ‘Discovery Channel’ or some other ‘Man versus Wild’ Channel has a job cut out for him. Instead of showing the adventurers the techniques of survival in wild deserts, deep forests and unplumbed oceans, they will have to show Muslims the art of survival in the Trump territory. The pursuit of basic survival has become necessary now with the slew of executive orders signed by Trump; one of them being the ban on the arrival of humans from Muslim countries on top of the extreme vetting of people coming from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The survival tactics are not so much important for those outside America but for an existing lot of Muslims in the USA. The latter will have to double-check their premises on the basis of which they arrived in the land of opportunity, rework their plans, reorient themselves to the kind of social life they had got used to. For they have entered into a new domain in which they are no longer welcome guests but potential suspects who have perhaps overstayed their visit in the country, and are, if Trump’s apprehensions rising through his fake hair are right, planning attacks on the US. The old ways will no longer work for them with Trump’s signatures on the executive orders. A new mode has been heralded in the United States. As one white assaulter told a Muslim woman, wearing a Hijab, Trump has come, and he will throw you out; his action and words are emblematic of the rise of the dark supremacist underbelly of the United States. Like him, there are thousands who have become emboldened by the in-your-face kind of aggressive and threatening language of their new leader. The Muslims from different nationalities living in the US had better see the writing both on the metaphorical wall and the Mexican wall, and follow the classical wisdom, do in Rome what the Romans do, otherwise they might as well meet a similar fate, if not the same, as of those who go into unexplored wilderness without the requisite skill sets of survival.

On his part, Trump seems to be eager to prove Huntington right. He is only making the lines of clash bolder, igniting past memories, and pitting civilisations against each other. If Muslims and other minorities are pushed to the margins in his country with his explicit orders — smacking of medieval prejudices — the step will not go without repercussions in countries where Christians are in a minority. If the sign of the crescent is made suspicious in the US, the cross will, unfortunately, soon meet a dismal situation in the non-Christian countries. The Christian minorities will become unwitting victims of orders signed across the Atlantic Ocean. Not that their condition is any good in some Muslim countries, especially in the war-torn Middle East, however, forbidding Muslims or their kin from coming to the States will recharge them further to persecute the cross-bearing bodies. Not only in the Muslim countries but also in other non-Muslim and non-Christian countries, because Trump has made a special mention of Christians. He is vowing to protect the Christians, allowing them to come to the USA, from countries where he feels the condition is not good for their survival.

In other words, Trump wishes to create Israel out of America. Because this prioritisation of the religion of the majority is an article of faith in Israel. Israel encourages Jews from across the world to come to the Jewish nation, under the right to return principle of their country. A similar proposition is in the mind of the fake-hair Trump. Let Christians of all brands land on the shore of the country and ask the non-Christians to stay put where they live. Or if they wish to come make it so hard that they send a message back home, staying back is better than the grueling process of entrance into the country. The North Atlantic Treaties are burnt, the support to NATO is a thing of the past but a consolidation of the Christian world is in the offing, a kind of vision which must sound so strange and remote to those who just a few weeks ago saw a person of African descent with Muslim ancestry ruling the country. That is why a quick adjustment to what looks like a political storm is critical. Only future can tell how things shape up both socially and politically; however, a country which has seen so much mixing of nations, races and religions, does seem, will weather this storm. Not a day has passed since Trump’s assumption of power without protestors on the streets, saying how awkward he is making them feel the world over. A former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who is a Christian with the Jewish background, has said that she will register herself as a Muslim in solidarity with the Muslims. Mark Zuckerberg, the brain behind Facebook, has come out against Trump, so have a number of other personalities. From these indications, it seems the changes will not run deep into the psyche of the people, who put constitutionalism before demagoguery but may enforce more political correctness in the public speech. Because fear has the habit of altering the character of the tongue. But between hope and future is Trump, who is as much honest as he is dangerous, and may end up undoing all the work done in the US in the past, and paint the US as well as the world in a manner unheard of in the past. Meanwhile, the Muslims in the country have to weave a life-vest of a new speech and action to survive the Trump territory.

The writer can be reached at javjnu@gmail.com