Jihadist Groups Hail Trump’s Travel Ban as a Victory
In which our president emboldens and encourages terror groups by proving their anti-US agit-propaganda as true.
The whole point of terror is to encourage dystopian reactions. Terrorists only have the power that our fear lends to them. They are not an existential threat to the US way of live (unless we make it so,) they are not a threat to our economies (unless we make it so,) they are not a threat to freedom (unless we so unwisely choose to make it so.) Instead they are a threat to our values and our morals when they amplify the fear in the voices of the worst among us. Please stand up for true American values, please don’t let a coward lead us down this darkly awful road.
Several postings suggested that Trump was fulfilling the predictions of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American born al-Qaeda leader and preacher who famously said that the “West would eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.” Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
“When U.S. President Donald Trump says ‘We don’t want them here’ and bans the Muslim immigrants from Muslim countries, there is one thing that comes to our mind,” said another posting, beneath a banner of al-Awlaki and his quote.
Another posting on the Telegram channel “Abu Magrebi” said Trump’s actions “clearly revealed the truth and harsh reality behind the American government’s hatred toward Muslims.”
Leaders of the Islamic State speak frequently of their intention to drive a wedge between Western governments and their Muslim populations, and have welcomed outside help — intentional or not — in fulfilling that goal. In a 2015 essay in the Islamic State’s English-language magazine Dabiq, the group said that its motivation for launching terrorist attacks in Europe was to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that would force ambivalent Muslims to enlist with them.