{"id":251363,"date":"2016-06-22T14:52:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T14:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/isis-must-love-donald-trump\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T14:52:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T14:52:40","slug":"isis-must-love-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/isis-must-love-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS Must Love Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"khalil-Radical-Haters-unite-donald-trump-isis\"<\/p>\n

Like Trump himself, ISIS benefits from anything that drives a wedge between Muslims and the societies they live in. (Cartoon by Khalil Bendib \/ Otherwords.org)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As the sun set over New York on June 12, hundreds of Muslims gathered in Hudson River Park to break their Ramadan fast together.\u00a0Iftar<\/em>, the evening Ramadan meal, is often a joyous celebration of faith and family. But the mood that Sunday was solemn: That morning, news had broken of the ghastly massacre of LGBTQ revelers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.<\/p>\n

A lone Muslim had allegedly perpetrated the attack. Here by the Hudson, over 200 knelt in prayer.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re praying for those who were lost,\u201d one woman explained<\/a> in a video circulated by the Huffington Post, her voice breaking. \u201cAs Muslims, we\u2019re united in our outrage over this senseless act of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, an Orlando imam condemned terrorism as un-Islamic and affirmed his belief that \u201cIslam teaches peace.\u201d The Florida chapter of a national Muslim group called on members to donate blood for the victims. And statements of sympathy tumbled forth from American Muslims in what CBS News called \u201can avalanche<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, we stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community,\u201d said the group Muslim Advocates. \u201cYour grief is our grief. Your outrage is our outrage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, none of those touching gestures deterred Donald Trump from warning darkly that \u201cradical Islam is coming to our shores.\u201d\u00a0In a falsehood-riddled speech<\/a> following the Orlando massacre, the presumptive GOP nominee blamed the shooting on immigration and \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Muslims all over America sent their sympathies to Orlando, Trump mocked his Democratic rival\u2019s insistence that \u201cMuslims are peaceful and tolerant people.\u201d He accused Muslims of causing \u201cdeath and destruction\u201d by covering up terrorism in their midst (though it was later revealed that a Muslim member of Mateen\u2019s community had reported him<\/a> as suspicious).<\/p>\n

Then, in perhaps the most ominous part of the address, Trump claimed that Democrats will \u201ctake away Americans\u2019 guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.\u201d\u00a0Muslim immigrants are the problem, he seems to be saying. And guns are the solution.<\/p>\n

If you ask me, I\u2019d feel much safer with the crowd at Hudson River Park than anywhere near a rally of armed Trump supporters.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the creepier part: For all his blathering that \u201cwe have to get smart\u201d about \u201cradical Islam,\u201d Trump is stupidly playing right into ISIS\u2019s hands.\u00a0Like Trump himself, the group benefits immensely from anything that drives a wedge between Muslims and the societies they live in.<\/p>\n

ISIS said as much itself \u2014 in plain English \u2014 in a publication detailing its plan to \u201cdestroy the gray zone<\/a>\u201d between infidels and believers. Since most Muslims seem to like <\/em>living in the liberal societies of Europe and North America, ISIS propagandists have written, the only way to drive up recruitment is to make Muslims feel unwelcome there.<\/p>\n

No wonder ISIS recruiters are now featuring Donald Trump in advertisements<\/a>.\u00a0It\u2019s not because they\u2019re afraid of him \u2014 it\u2019s because few people are working harder to make Muslims feel unwelcome than he is. Civil rights groups report that Trump\u2019s rise has paralleled a shocking increase<\/a> in hate crimes against Muslims in this country.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an outrage. And it\u2019s thoroughly self-defeating.<\/p>\n

In fact, the United States has arguably the most prosperous, well-integrated Muslim population<\/a> in the western world. Even as ISIS has scored a few recruiting successes among the much more marginalized Muslim communities of Europe \u2014 though even there the group falls way outside the mainstream \u2014 it\u2019s flat-lined here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scenes like the iftar <\/em>gathering in New York, in other words, are the rule, not the exception. They\u2019re a touching rejoinder to the toxic politics of division, and a far more accurate reflection of our Muslim neighbors than anything peddled by Trump.<\/p>\n

And, not least, they\u2019re a much better asset in the fight against terrorism than any bullet or bomb \u2014 or any demagogue who urges his followers to reach for their guns at the first sign of trouble.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Foreign Policy In Focus<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Trump himself, ISIS benefits from anything that drives a wedge between Muslims and the societies they live in. (Cartoon by Khalil Bendib \/ Otherwords.org) As the sun set over New York on June 12, hundreds of Muslims gathered in Hudson River Park to break their Ramadan fast together.\u00a0Iftar, the evening Ramadan meal, is often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-251363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}