By Charles Ogbu
THE #TRUMPLIST AND ISLAM AT A GLANCE
Few days ago, the newly sworn in U.S president, Donald Trump released a list of 7 Muslim countries whose citizens have been temporally banned from visiting the U.S. As expected, the list has generated a lot of controversies from those who believe that the ban contravenes the basic principle of tolerance upon which America was built.
I am of the view that condemning the action of the U.S president without taking a wholistic look at the issues which informed it amounts to playing to the gallery.
During the electioneering campaign, Donald Trump promised he would restrict Muslims coming into his country if he won the election. He campaigned and got elected on the strength of those promises. Which means, the American people who elected him actually wanted him to restrict Muslims coming to America. How can any reasonable person now expect the U.S president to renege on his campaign promises to his own people just to please the world? Is president Trump's first duty no longer to the people who elected him??
Personally, I can never understand why those Muslim refugees would leave Saudi Arabia the headquarters of all Muslims in the world, Behrain, Kuwait, Iran, Lebanon and all the other countries with whom they share the same "peaceful" religion, language, culture and even common boundary and walk thousands of kilometres all the way to Europe and America with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. The same America they kill with their mouths on daily basis? The same America that is peopled by infidels who eat pork and have sex with people of the same sex? I have never been able to understand this! And I really want to understand it.
Rather than joining the pseudo-moralists to lambast Trump for banning certain Muslims from visiting his country, we should look at the reasons that inform Trump's decision which is the fear of those Muslims growing so bold and audacious to force their own Islamic life styles on his American people through violent means.
Not all Muslims are terrorists, granted. But, almost all terrorists that have ever carried out terrorist attack in Europe and America are Muslims and almost all known terrorist groups in the world today are Muslims. This is a statement of fact, verifiable fact! So in all honesty, can we really say that Trump's fears are baseless???
We must do away with political correctness for once and tell ourselves the bitter truth here:
Humanity has always been at war with radical Islam.
Granted that the number of those committing atrocities in the name of Islam is negligible when compared to the so called moderate ones. Now, the question is, what do the so called moderate Muslims do whenever their radical brethren kill innocent people in the name of Islam? The answer is nothing!
When a Christian woman, Mrs Bridget Agbohime was beheaded in kano by Muslims youth, there was no outrage from Nigerian Muslim community. None at all! Even the president indirectly blamed the dead woman for not respecting the religion of her killers. As I type this, all the killer yet roam the earth as free men. The Nigerian govt and the security agencies, all headed by Muslims refused to prosecute those monsters who gruesomely murdered that woman in the name of islam.
What does this portray???
What other proof do I need to conclude that the so called moderate Muslims are no different from their radical brethren when it comes to lack of respect for the sanctity of human lives?????
How many times have the so called moderate Muslims protested against any of the numerous terrorist attack carried out by their fellow Muslims around the world?? But, now, they are all protesting against #TheTrumpList even when it was their conspiracy of silence which connotes complicity in those attacks that birthed the TrumpList.
As long as the larger population of Muslims who claim to be peaceful find it difficult to openly condemn the mindless bloodletting the few radical ones carry out in the name of Islam, those larger Muslim population will always remain irrelevant and the criminal activities of those few extremists will continue to determine how Islam is viewed by the rest of the world!
Instead of wallowing in self pity, the Muslim world need to do more to combat Islamic fundamentalism. So far, they are not doing much in that regard.
Stop trying to convince me that Islam is a religion of peace. Prove it!
If Islam is a religion of peace as some Muslims would have us believe, Islamic extremists should be extremely peaceful! You don't need Charles Ogbu to be the one to tell you this, do you?
President Trump is not to blame. Radical Islam and the silence of the so called moderate Muslims in the face of the senseless killing their brethren have continue to subject humanity to, are to blame for all these.
The earlier the Muslim world admit that something is fundamentally wrong with some teachings of Islam especially the violent verses and work towards genuine reforms to take out those violent sections from where terrorists have continued to draw their inspiration, the better for Islam and the rest of the human race!
