Monday Night Massacre

[Dill]

(02-02-2017, 08:38 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I'm not sure if the ban is constitutional or not, but come on now... calling it a "Muslim Ban" is getting kind of ridiculous, isn't it? I realize that "Muslim Ban" is more provocative and exciting than "countries that are training or arming terrorists, or are otherwise unstable and hate us ban". Not even mentioning the fact that it bans all people from those countries, regardless of religion (10% of Syrians aren't Muslim). Here's this....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
1. Indonesia
2. Pakistan
3. India
4. Bangladesh
5. Nigeria

That's the top-5 countries in the world by Muslim population. None of them are on the banned list. On the other hand, those seven countries? They are only 12.2% of the world's Muslim population.

That means 87.8% of the world's Muslims can still enter and leave and enter the US again.

So seriously. Stop propagating the "Muslim Ban" term. It may not be found unconstitutional, and heck, I may not even agree with all those countries being on the list, but it's not a Muslim Ban.

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Leonard, I appreciate your point. But let me explain why I think we ought to continue calling Trump’s executive order a Muslim Ban.

First, I grant it is not yet a ban in the original form that Trump intended.  Since first proposing a total ban on Muslims, he has since learned that such a ban would face legal/constitutional challenge and many of his own party would not be down with it. So he charged supporters, including Guilliani, to find a way to change the legal language to effect the ban without triggering Constitutional challenges. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/trump-asked-for-a-muslim-ban-giuliani-says-and-ordered-a-commission-to-do-it-legally/?utm_term=.0a608cdf03fc. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/why-trumps-immigration-rules-are-unconstitutional-214722 

This is why Yates insisted that we need to look at the context created by statements leading up to the ban, which plainly stated the blanket religious criterion. For an analogy, think of how southern states responded to the 15th Amendment giving African Americans the right to vote. They could no longer use racial criteria to restrict the vote, so they applied their legal ingenuity to “separate but equal” and voting tests which made no mention of race but in effect excluded blacks. A similar process is underway now. If the ban passes current tests, it can be expanded. If it does not, then the language can be tinkered with again.

Second, Trump’s legal advisers shifted the stated criteria from religion to “danger” and “threat.” This is the first step, a testing of the waters. You mentioned that countries with highest Muslim populations, like Indonesia, are not on the list. But have you also noticed that the countries whose citizens have done the most damage in the U.S., like Saudi Arabia, are not on the list? (And how many golf courses does Trump have in Somalia or Iraq?)

Third, Religious tests still inform Trump’s order, since there is an exception for “persecuted religious minorities” from the seven MAJORITY MUSLIM countries. Those will be largely Christian—never mind that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are persecuted too. So it does not ban all people from those countries regardless of religion.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/29/fact-checking-president-donald-trump-on-false-christian-refugee-stats.html. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/trump-christian-refugees/

Finally,  the ban violates so many of the international norms/laws which the US has supported since 1948 in reaction to the international fascist norms which brought the disaster of WWII upon the world.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/international-laws-trump-muslim-ban-breaking-170202135132664.html

This is why I go with the national and global opposition to Trump’s ban. We should not accept Trumpspeak and name the ban for what it really is.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/trump_s_executive_order_on_immigration_is_a_muslim_ban.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/yes-muslim-ban-donald-trumps-9733360