President Trump has a ‘dark vision’ of America under siege from radical Islam, says the New York Times – and that vision is now radically reshaping the policies of the United States. Hence the ‘Muslim travel ban’, as it’s still being called, despite the protestations of the administration that it’s nothing of the sort.
Fear of Islam is now thoroughly entrenched in America: there’s no doubt about that. It preoccupies Evangelical Christians and the much smaller constituency of white nationalists (some of whom used to admire jihadist Islam for its zero tolerance of Jews and gays before morphing into passionate if unconvincing Zionists).
But, as I ask my guests Rashad Ali and Edward Lucas on this week’s Holy Smoke podcast, is President Trump also stoking up fears of Islam as a whole – turning it, in effect, into America’s ‘Great Satan’? We now know that he did ask Rudy Guiliani for some sort of Muslim ban, and was told that anti-terrorist travel restrictions were the only weapon to hand.
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