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This week U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a temporary, “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” As the vast majority of the American political establishment reacted with horror and disdain to the proposal, Mr. Trump’s idea nonetheless seemed to strike a chord with much of the Republican base. “A lot of Muslims hate us,” they reasoned, “so this is the sort of thing we need to do to keep America safe.”
After the recent shootings in California and the attacks in Paris, segments of the American (and European) public appear ready for anything that promises them security. Reactionary and populist voices in the media and politics oblige them, calling for harsh measures against real and imagined enemies and declaring that privacy and civil liberties will need to be forfeit in the process. The strident discourse against foreign “others” as a source of danger attracts and encourages racists and bigots who never dared speak their mind before, as spineless media allow the likes of Mr. Trump to hijack what should be a serious and careful public discourse.
In an increasingly complex and ever-changing world, we should never underestimate the appeal that simple solutions hold for the bewildered. Trump’s proposal is of course ludicrous. Besides completely running roughshod over cherished American values of religious liberty, anti-discrimination and acceptance of diversity, such a policy would prove completely unworkable and ineffective.
The mere suggestion of such a policy option in America ironically plays right into the hands of the “Islamic State” (ISIS) and other jihadis. The likes of ISIS want to attract more supporters and recruits, and there is probably no better way to do so than engendering discrimination and bigotry towards Muslims in general. In the world as the jihadis see it, convincing everyone that a clash of civilizations really exists will put some 1.3 billion Muslims into their pool of constituents, supporters and recruits – as opposed to the small minority of Muslims who currently support the jihadis.
Just as demagogues such as Trump attract support from frustrated, credulous and often ignorant segments of society, so too with ISIS and other jihadi groups. The radical Islamist ideologue Sayid Qutb wrote, “…truth is one and cannot be divided; if it is not truth, than it must be falsehood. The mixing and coexisting of the truth and falsehood is impossible.” In this black and white view of the world, there is no grey, no nuance and no uncertainty. The troubled mind can take comfort in the starkness and simplicity of tawheed, the oneness of God, and the simple command to mimic every aspect of the seventh century Arabian desert lives of the Prophet and his companions. The resulting xenophobia comforts simpletons, lost people confused by modern globalization -- just as many a Trump supporter knows little of the Muslims they want to ban from their supposedly fortified shores.
More intelligent attempts to grapple with the complexities of today’s world, on the other hand, seem less compelling. Carefully calibrated deployments of political, economic, diplomatic and military force by the Obama administration to address multiple complex problems – including ISIS, Assad, Turkey’s shift in policies, Iran’s regional attempt at hegemony, Saudi fears, Kurdish ambitions, economic problems, and others – do not allow for the catchy five second soundbites Mr. Trump seems so good at delivering. An appeal to statistics which shows that Americans are safer than they have ever been, with the possible exception of pollution and climate change’s looming dark clouds, gets little traction. Instead, an impatient, frustrated and chauvinist part of America would rather a quick fix, along the lines of “ban them” (Donald Trump), “carpet bomb them” (Ted Cruz) or “nuke them” (my next door neighbor and a few other “average Joes” in America), sacrificing all principles and basic liberties on the altar of expediency and false security.
In the case of radicalized Muslims, impatience, frustration and a never-ending tendency to claim the victimhood card plays a similarly corrosive role. As Aaron Miller wrote, “At some point, as every person knows, there’s an expiration date for blaming your parents for the way you turned out. And in the case of the Arab world, the warranty on coverage for blaming the Mossad, the CIA, America, the Jews, or Bozo the Clown for the absence of democracy, the lack of respect for human rights, and gender inequality has long expired.”
A moderate’s approach to Islam is also probably less appealing to some people than the starkly simple Salafi message: Instead of mistaking "Islam as it first emerged" for "the true essence of Islam," the moderates see their religion as ever-evolving attempts to get closer to God and improve the world. The "true essence" of a religion is the spirit of the message, and when Islam came onto the scene in Arabia, it gave rights to women, slaves, the poor and others where none had existed before, and introduced a moral code that went beyond "me and mine" – clearly demonstrating a progressive spirit that nonetheless had to remain understandable to the people of the time (if slavery had been immediately banned in Islam, for instance, the message might have been rejected by a people not ready for such a revolutionary change). Just as with moderate Christian and Jewish thought, the moderate Islamic scholar then goes on to deduce what additional reforms faithfully adhere to the true essence and spirit of Islam in the modern world – all of which is a bit too nuanced and complex for some.
It is, unfortunately, too often the simpletons and cretins of the world who enjoy the clarity and certainty necessary for action – while the rest of the world vacillates about the pros and cons of various options. When all the world’s problems are simple nouns – Muslims, the West, Israel, terrorism, Freemasons, globalization, imperialism – they can be dealt via simple actions.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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