Trump Laid Groundwork for "Muslim Ban 2.0." Here's How Organizers Are Bracing.
Muslim organizers warn that an executive order signed by Trump on January 20 sets the stage for an updated travel ban.
By Maha Hilal , Truthout
Published January 25, 2025
In the early hours of New Year’s Day, an individual in New Orleans killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others on the city’s famed Bourbon Street. When reports emerged that the alleged attacker was a Muslim American by the name of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, then President-elect Donald Trump quickly turned the tragedy into fodder for his Islamophobic, racist and xenophobic rhetoric. In the days after the attack, Trump took to social media to condemn the violence caused by “Radical Islamic Terrorism,” which he blamed on Biden’s “Open Border Policy.” Further reports soon revealed that Jabbar was not, in fact, an immigrant and was a veteran of the U.S. military. Neither of these facts, however, mattered to Trump and the narrative he has sought to cement, framing Muslims as foreign outsiders and claiming that Islam — not for example, Jabbar’s participation in one of the most violent militaries in the world — could have played a part in this violent transgression.
While none of this rhetoric is new, an emboldened Trump promised to unleash even more hateful rhetoric, along with criminalizing and demonizing policies during his term, making these anti-Muslim narratives an important part of his arsenal. Less than three weeks later, in his inauguration speech, Trump delivered on precisely this promise. Coupled with the over two dozen executive orders that he signed on his first day in office alone — including an order that clearly lays the groundwork for an updated “Muslim ban” — Trump made it clear that when it comes to expanding repression and state violence against Muslims and other marginalized communities, he intends to do so at lightning speed.
In the face of this ongoing precarity — made worse by the violence waged by the Biden administration, Muslim Americans across the country have been bracing for the impact of his second administration. Most importantly, they have been and are continuing to organize their communities to survive and resist his agenda.
When Demonizing Rhetoric Becomes Policy
In a speech that Trump gave to Muslim and Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia in 2017, during his first administration, his then national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, reportedly encouraged him to use the phrase “Islamist extremist” instead of the term “radical Islamic extremism” to avoid demonizing Islam as a faith altogether. Though his written remarks included the theoretically less offensive phrase, his delivery of the speech did not. When Trump denounced the New Orleans attacker using the same terms, less than three weeks ahead of his inauguration, he once again demonstrated his ideological commitment to synonymizing Islam and terrorism. When condemning the attack, Trump also lamented that “Radical Islamic Terrorism and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.” By preemptively blaming Muslims and immigrants for any increase in crime, Trump further laid the groundwork for criminalizing policies, even before assuming the presidency.
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-laid-groundwork-for-muslim-ban-2-0-heres-how-organizers-are-bracing/
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Miami Blue
(228 posts)First, Rashida falsely accused President Biden of supporting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Second, she urged the Michigan Democrats to vote against President Biden during the primary back on February 27th primary. And third, she refused to endorse Vice President Harris for POTUS.
Similarly, her constituents are a bunch of ignoramuses/ naivetés and decided to vote for FelonRapistTraitorTrump aka Donald Fidel Castro Trump, and the Marxist pal of Vladimir Putin aka the so-called nominee for the Green Party by the name of Jill Stein.
Well done naiveté Rashida Tlaib and congrats to the rest of your ignoramuses constituents, btw, you all suck.
I hope that you all have learned the moral of this story which is that Don The Con the notorious
con man grabbed you all by your respective
“whatever” Thanks to your dearest Rep.
Rashida Tlaib.
PS
Yet and more notably, I hope you all have
learned that elections have consequences.
GreenWave
(10,198 posts)It looks like repugs played damned if you do, damned if you don't issues with Harris. Musk played anti-Harris propaganda in Pa for the Muslims and where Jewish people were more prevalent anti-Harris, anti-Israel propaganda.
Another such issue was Tik Tok.
Aristus
(69,090 posts)It's a shame no one told them this might happen.
No, wait! Someone did tell them this would happen!
Sorry, guys. We're washing our hands of the whole mess. If you get deported, you literally cannot say you weren't warned.