The Trump “Muslim ban”

US President Donald Trump has done well to keep the attention of a volatile world on himself for weeks on end. His recipe is simple; keep proposing and implementing the same crazy ideas he promised during his election campaign. Western media and liberal commentators then respond with what they do best; blow the situation out of proportion and talk up the civilizational and existential threat to their values and way of life.

How dare he trample over the pluralism and equality for which so much time, effort (and lies) were expended over centuries! How could he so flagrantly be so un-American and Nazi-like!

But beyond the emotional talk and empty rhetoric of offended liberals lie two fundamental problems. Problems which only people of reasoning would stop to consider.

The first is the basis upon which Trump is crafting his foreign policy and border control polices. It is how he is deciding which countries to block and which countries not to block that is the problem. Not the fact that he is blocking immigration from specific countries. The basis in question isn’t a terror threat and the fallacy of “Islamic terrorism”. The basis in question is linked to the very nature of the US and all modern states. The basis is Nationalistic i.e. people that are not ethnically or culturally part of the host state are shunned to satiate the prejudices and “fears” of his nation.

Nationalist governments push nations and peoples into competition and conflict. Nation states institutionalise this situation of rivalry, clash and domination between nations. The solution however, isn’t secular thought. Pluralism, equality and the “American melting pot” aren’t the solution to the “Trump ideology”. These ideas clearly haven’t dented the rise of Trump despite being defining features of the USA. There are more powerful ideas in the country and the concept of the nation state is as powerful as they can get. It predates the ideas of the enlightenment and is entrenched within western societies. The moment the national identity is perceived to be under threat, Hitler, Churchill and Trump become inevitable.

The solution therefore is to replace the nation state model with a model that works for all people’s and nations. One that can truly be global. A model that allows the existence of what some term to be a super state. This model must be solely based on an intellectual and legal basis with no fixed borders. Where it is aimed for citizenship to extend to the entire human population. In such a situation, pluralism and equality aren’t even needed never mind refuted. This is because the problem they were invented to solve is fundamentally removed and that is the rivalry, competition and desire to dominate by one group of people over another. The Islamic Khilafah "Caliphate" is this model and sole solution to the barbaric nature of nationalistic and ethnic rivalry globally. More so than a liberal or socialist global model which are based on reactionary ideas such as pluralism and equality. The Khilafah "Caliphate" is universal to all times and places.

This leads naturally to the second fundamental problem exposed by the Trump phenomenon. And that is the peculiar way that many Muslims in the west joined the liberal hype and are offended in the same way the liberals are about Trump’s policy. If the Muslims who believe in the Khilafah "Caliphate" don’t carry it as their political message/demand/ project and proposed alternative to the current world order then who will? It doesn’t make sense for a Kafir, despite being allowed full citizenship rights in the Khilafah "Caliphate", to do it on behalf of the Muslims.

Unless Muslims stop thinking according to the prevalent secular ideas, and unless Muslims begin to carry the Islamic thoughts with regards to these same political, economic and societal issues, we’d be part of the problem. It is hardly befitting for the Ummah of Muhammad (saw) to beg for equal treatment. Rather, we should be setting the global standard for how citizens should be treated, for how different ethnicities are treated, for how members of different faiths should be treated, for how foreign policy should be conducted and for how visas and immigration systems should be run with regards to belligerent states. This will not happen until we have our Khilafah "Caliphate" applying our Shariah based on our Aqeedah.

The first step to any political change of this sort is to adopt and propagate its intellectual basis against the dominant one. For the Khilafah "Caliphate" it is adoption of Tawheed (politically) and rejection of Secularism and liberal values.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Yusuf Burhan