Donald Trump And ISIS: How They Look Like Two Sides Of The Same Coin

When US President Donald Trump stood in front a cheering crowd in Warsaw, Poland in early July 2017, he referenced the United States¡¯ fight, as part of a community of responsible nations, ¡°against common enemies and in defence of civilisation itself¡± in the face of ¡°terrorism and extremism¡±. He went so far as to state, ¡°The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.¡±

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For Trump and his associates, the main threat to Western civilisation comes in the form of the Islamic faith. Since the early days of his presidential campaign, he has surrounded himself with individuals advocating for a simplistic world view that pits the forces of Western Christianity against a Muslim civilisation in a worldwide struggle mimicking the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union as the standard bearers of democratic and communist systems. Senior Trump Advisor Steve Bannon, for example, has stated that the United States is ¡°at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism.¡±

The Trump campaign platform included the statement: ¡°We will defeat the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the cold war.¡±

Such a worldview has, unfortunately, moved beyond fiery rhetoric and resulted in policy action by the Trump administration. Early in his term, Trump signed an executive order banning the entry into the United States of citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations, an order ruled as a whole to be unconstitutional by federal court. However, parts of this ¡°Muslim ban¡± have since come into effect after a Supreme Court ruling, though under the dark cloud of endless criticism and controversy. Trump has also discussed revamping a counter-extremist program to solely focus on Islam.

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With these programs, the shadows of suspicion fall on any innocent individual seen to be a member of the enemy civilisation. Trump¡¯s positions have even inspired his supporters to commit acts of violence, such a January 2017 incident in which a Muslim employee at JFK airport was assaulted by a Trump supporter shouting, ¡°Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you.¡± This has been part of a general spike of hate crimes against immigrants, including South Asians, especially Sikhs, who are accused of being Muslim. In February 2017, an Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed, with his friend Alok Madasani injured, in Kansas with their attacker shouting, ¡°get out of my country¡± and later bragging about killing ¡°two Iranians¡±.

The following month, Deep Rai, a Sikh man, was shot in front of his home in Washington State by a man yelling, ¡°go back to your country¡±.

This line of thinking is reflective of a simplistic idea of a civilisation, one in which the external boundaries between civilisations, overwhelming defined by religion and race, are obvious and internal conformity to a civilizational ideal and identity is a necessity. Any conciliation to or even the mere presence of other cultures, traditions, and religions, in this thinking, only weakens the civilisation as a whole and its ability to stand against the mass forces of any civilizational opponent. This is a zero sum position that rejects multiculturalism, tolerance, or compromise. Many of the Trump administration¡¯s policies have stemmed from this logic.

The intellectual basis of this thinking is found in the late Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington¡¯s concept of a ¡°clash of civilisations¡±. He predicted conflict would increasingly emerge along the ¡°bloody borders¡± or ¡°fault lines¡± between civilizations, drawing increasing numbers of nations on both sides according to civilizational loyalties. Through this frame, any conflict between different religious communities in the world, regardless of any local political or economic reasons for the outbreak of violence that often have little to do with religion, will be interpreted as just one part of this civilizational war.

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This worldview, however, requires an enemy, a part that groups like ISIS are more than willing to play. In fact, ISIS reflects the same kind of thinking as the Trump administration as its mirror image. ISIS sees their own struggle as a civilizational war between Islam and the forces of Western civilisation, a message reinforced by the Trump administration¡¯s rhetoric and policies. This message is then used in their own recruitment efforts. In the wake of military strikes by the United States and Russia in Syria, an ISIS spokesman announced, ¡°Islamic youth everywhere, ignite jihad against the Russians and the Americans in their crusaders¡¯ war against Muslims.¡± These calcified positions feed off of and provoke one another.

The logic used to justify Trump¡¯s anti-Islamic policies and ISIS¡¯s ideas about the necessity of a global jihad against Christian crusaders, however, display an ignorance of history.

For every assertion of a centuries-long civilizational clash, a counter-example can be provided that disproves the theory. Within India¡¯s great multi-cultural and multi-religious society, for example, the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb based in the historic Awadh region of northern Indian plains demonstrates the ability for Hindus and Muslims to unite in a sense of common humanity based in secularism and a respect for all people.

Similarly, under the Muslim-ruled Cordoba Caliphate of medieval Spain, Muslims, Jews, and Christians were able to live and thrive together under a shared culture of La Convivencia (coexistence). The Christian Norman kings of medieval Sicily as well held a great respect for Islam and their Muslim subjects, with many of the rulers learning Arabic, having Muslim bodyguards, and inviting Muslim scholars and artists to their courts. Trump can even look no further than the United States¡¯ own founding documents that stressed a secular state committed to cultural and religious freedom for all.

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The simplistic idea of a clash between unchanging civilisations becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that can lead to the continued suffering of many innocent people across the world.

This thinking, embraced by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and beyond, needs to be rejected. Only with flexibility, adaptation, and tolerance can a culture and political system survive and thrive in a fast changing world.

Even Edmund Burke, the intellectual father of conservative ideology, recognised in the late 18th century, ¡°A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.¡± Despite Trump and his supporters¡¯ best efforts, they cannot permanently turn back the advancing wheel of progress to protect the past that never truly existed.

There is no singular Muslim world, just as there is no singular Western world. If we do not recognise and embrace the great diversity within different civilisations, countries, religions, and even cities and towns, then we are only contributing to and perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.