Media miss major policy shift in Trump's immigration order

Amid rancor over 'ban,' administration identifies 'heart of the problem'

Art Moore

Amid the controversy over President Trump’s executive order on immigration, a major philosophical change in counter-terrorism strategy articulated in the order has been largely missed.

In contrast to the frequent reassurances of previous presidents that it is a “religion of peace,” Islam – the historic, fundamentalist interpretation that is mainstream across the Middle East – will be regarded by the Trump administration as a hostile political ideology that threatens the U.S. Constitution.

Brian Thomas, a contributor to Jihad Watch, wrote that the important development has been lost in the focus on Trump’s order to temporarily block entry to visitors and migrants from seven terror-producing countries.

“While they carried on their endless discussion of the completely tangential list of exactly which countries citizens had their nonexistent ‘right’ to enter the United States curtailed, the administration continued to pursue its clearly defined purpose,” wrote Thomas.

“That purpose is to focus the full resources of the federal government on the only ideology that threatens the republic at this time.”

Without mentioning Islam or Muslims, the order, he said, “arrives at the heart of the problem.”

“Islamic values always lead to intolerance. Islam’s guiding texts are all fundamentally devoted to separating the world between believers and non-believers,” he said. “All of our liberal freedoms and our equality stem from a Judeo-Christian belief that all men are created in the image of God and are equal before equitable laws. That is not at the heart of Islam.”

Trump’s order states:

In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Last week, WND reported that, according to five sources briefed on the matter who spoke to Reuters, the Trump administration is about to make good on its promise to “name the enemy” with a plan to recast its Countering Violent Extremism program as “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”

‘Hostile political ideology’

Thomas said the first line in the Trump executive order is evidence that it “isn’t something they put together in a week; this is evidence of their entire thinking on Islam and the defence of the west.”

“They’re going to treat Islam as a hostile political ideology. That is what has been needed for decades. It is the reversal of the ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ doctrine set in place by Bush on September 17, 2001.”

He said the statement that the United States “must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles” should “strike terror into the hearts of anyone looking to promote Islamic law above the United States’ existing constitution.”

That intention is made even more explicit with the next sentence: “The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”

Thomas noted it would apply to a communist overthrow of the United States,”but the only real threat on the global stage today is the ideology of Islamic supremacy.”

The order also spotlights Islam by specifying the U.S. should not admit those who “engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including ‘honor’ killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.”

Thomas recalled that CNN sought to impugn chief Trump adviser Steve Bannon by digging up a 2010 quote in which he criticized President George W. Bush for proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace.”

“Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submission.” Bannon said.

‘Wrongheaded’ move?

While the change in overall philosophy toward counter-terrorism embedded in the executive order has received little notice, three Democratic congressmen have protested the administration’s plan to abandon the broad Countering Violent Extremism strategy, the Hill reported.


In a letter Friday, Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson of Maryland, Eliot Engel of New York and John Conyers of Michigan said the move “is wrongheaded insofar as persons who commit acts of violent extremism are inspired by diverse political, religious and philosophical beliefs, and are not limited to any single population or region.”

Thompson is the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, while Conyers is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. Engel holds that title on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The congressmen join critics who have complained that the U.S. would no longer target groups such as white supremacists.

However, there have been more than 30,000 violent jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11 while the white supremacist threat, Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer has pointed out, has been “wildly exaggerated” by George Soros-funded groups and media “that downplay and deny the jihad threat.”

He further argues that jihad “is an international movement set on destroying the U.S. and found on every continent; white supremacism is not.”

He noted that a widely publicized study purporting to show that “right-wing extremists” have killed more people in the U.S. than Islamic jihadis, and thus pose a greater threat, has been debunked on many grounds.

The Congress members said changing course would damage national security by feeding into the propaganda created by terrorist groups and child domestic and international diplomatic relations.

They also fear it would alienate Muslim-American communities who might otherwise cooperate with law-enforcement.

But Spencer argued that Islamic jihadis routinely cite the texts and teachings of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

“The idea that Muslims who reject jihad terror will be enraged if the U.S. government takes note of this is absurd,” he said. “If they reject jihad terror, they won’t embrace it because officials are saying things they don’t like; in fact, if they really reject it, they should welcome and cooperate with efforts to identify its causes and eradicate them.”

Spencer said the congressmen essentially are “recommending that we curtail our speech to avoid criticizing Islam.”

He cited a Shariah, or Islamic law, blasphemy provision that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been trying to get the U.S. to accept by means of “hate speech” laws for years.

“That the statements of Thompson, Engel and Conyers are simply today’s conventional wisdom is one indication of how successful these efforts have been,” he said.

In Canada already, a Muslim member of the House of Commons, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, has filed a motion that critics say could set the government on a path to criminalizing so-called Islamophobia.

The petition sets out to “recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear” then laments that an “infinitesimally small number of extremist individuals have conducted terrorist activities while claiming to speak for the religion of Islam.”

“Their actions have been used as a pretext for a notable rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Canada,” it states.

Columnist Anthony Furey comments that it’s easy to see “how denouncing a radical imam for his Shariah advocacy could end up being considered, in the eyes of this motion, an Islamophobic act that’s a part of this alleged uptick in public fear.”

“This is an attempt to silence rational critics of political Islam.”

Enemy within

The New York Times reported this week President Trump’s advisers are debating an order to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.

The new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, co-sponsored a bill when he was in Congress to ban the Brotherhood and once warned in a radio interview that Islamic supremacist groups tied to the Brotherhood were infiltrating the United States.

Among them are the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was found, according to evidence in a terror-funding trial, to be a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.

WND reported last week CAIR is calling on Muslim American citizens re-entering the United States to refuse to answer the questions of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers if they are taken aside for secondary screening.

In 2011, CAIR’s San Francisco chapter featured a poster on its website urging Muslims to “build a wall of resistance” against the FBI by refusing to talk to the bureau’s agents.

The FBI severed ties with CAIR in 2008 after the U.S. Justice Department named the Washington-based group an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal scheme led by the Holy Land Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.