Trump’s ‘Muslim’ travel ban: “ignorant and prejudiced”

Leaders across the globe have condemned President Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim countries as ‘divisive’ ‘counterproductive’ and ‘ignorant’.

When hearing of the ban, Britain’s most famous track Olympiam Mo Farah, who was born in Somali, a country on the banned list, stated:

"The Queen made me a Knight, President Trump has made me an alien.”

Farah, who lives in part in the US with his family, went on to add:

"I’ll have to write to my wife and children to tell them I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them again.”

Here in the UK both the Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Office Minister Boris Johnson strongly disagree with the travel ban. Many however, felt the PM could have acted quicker to condemn the ban.

In Trump's executive order the President not only banned citizens from several countries, including Iraq, Iran, and Somali, but also banned all refugees from entering the US, prompting the German leader Angela Merkel to remind the President of their global obligation to the Geneva refugee Convention of 1951, that signatories accept refugees who are fleeing war and persecution.

The painful and tragic irony is that those fleeing the strongholds of ‘Islamic State’ or Daesh can no longer count on the US as a safe haven. Furthermore, in terms of a propaganda coup for those peddling extremism, they could not have expected such an easy recruiting card. Those seeking to poison young Muslim minds will point to the most powerful leader of the world in effect declaring hate and penalties against all Muslims.

They along with far-Right leaders such as Holland’s Geert Wilders who praised Trump’s order will see this as a way to build their extremist bases.

Some will also argue it is no coincidence that 24 hours after the President's order, a white supremacist entered a mosque in Quebec, Canada to slaughter six Muslims and wound a further eight.

The climate of hate and Islamaphobia translates to a tiny minority behaving in unspeakable ways.

Simon Woolley