In Face of Trump’s Order, Some Muslim Nations Are Conspicuously Silent
Declan Walsh ("The New York Times," January 29, 2017)
Cairo — The Germans criticized it. The British voiced their discomfort.
The French, the Canadians and even some Republican senators in Washington
stood in open opposition.
But in Cairo and Riyadh, in the heart of the Muslim world, President Trump’
s decision to bar millions of refugees and citizens of seven
Muslim-majority countries from the United States was met with a conspicuous
silence.
King Salman of Saudi Arabia, home of Islam’s holiest sites, spoke to Mr.
Trump by telephone on Sunday but made no public comment. President Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, whose capital, Cairo, is a traditional seat of
Islamic scholarship, said nothing.
Even the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a group of 57 nations that
considers itself the collective voice of the Muslim world, kept quiet.
Leaders in Iran and Iraq, two of the countries targeted by Mr. Trump’s
order, issued furious denunciations on Sunday and vowed to take retaliatory
measures. But the silence in the capitals of Muslim-majority countries
unaffected by the order reflected a lack of solidarity and an enduring
uncertainty about the direction that Mr. Trump’s foreign policy might take in
some of
the world’s most volatile corners.
Will he move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
Designate Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization? Fall in
line with Russia in dealing with the conflict in Syria?
“Trump has promised to do all kinds of things, but it’s not clear what he
will move on immediately,” said Nathan J. Brown, a Middle East expert at
George Washington University. “Nobody seems to know. It’s not even clear if
Trump knows.”
The lack of unity stems from an old problem: Muslim leaders pay lip
service to the “ummah,” or global community of Muslims, but are more often
driven by narrow national interests — even when faced with grave actions seen
as
an affront to their own people.
“They don’t have a strong basis of legitimacy at home,” said Rami G.
Khouri, a senior fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American
University
of Beirut. “They are delicately perched between the anger of their own
people and the anger they might generate from the American president.”
Still, Mr. Trump’s executive order — which froze all refugee arrivals in
the United States and barred the entry of citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days — has sent a whirlwind of
confusion, anxiety and fury across the Middle East and Africa. Refugees have
been
turned back at airports, families separated indefinitely and long-planned
trips upended.
“I thought in America, there were institutions and democracy,” said Fuad
Sharef, 51, an Iraqi Kurd bound for New York who was turned away from the
Cairo airport with his wife and three children on Saturday morning. “This
looks like a decision from a dictator. It’s like Saddam Hussein.”
On Sunday, Trump administration officials backtracked on one aspect of the
order, saying green-card holders would be allowed to return to the United
States. In a Facebook post on Sunday evening, Mr. Trump insisted that his
policy was not a “Muslim ban” and accused the news media of inaccurate
reporting. Hours earlier, he had characterized the conflict with the Islamic
State in starkly sectarian terms, asserting on Twitter: “Christians in the
Middle East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror
to continue!”
In fact, a majority of the Islamic State’s victims have been Muslims, many
of them shot, burned or beheaded. Among the Muslims who managed to escape
Islamic State territory are the refugees Mr. Trump has now excluded.
In a phone conversation with Mr. Trump on Saturday, Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany cited the 1951 Refugee Convention, which calls on
signatories
to take in people fleeing war, according to Steffen Seibert, Ms. Merkel’s
spokesman. Yet in much of the Middle East, Mr. Trump is less likely to get
such a scolding.
He has drawn close to Mr. Sisi of Egypt, whom he called a “fantastic guy,”
and is considering designating the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Sisi’s sworn
enemy, a terrorist organization. In a call last week, the two leaders
discussed a possible visit to the White House by Mr. Sisi, whose
administration
faces accusations of human rights abuses — an unthinkable prospect during
the Obama administration.
In his order on Friday, whose stated aim is to keep extremists out of the
United States, Mr. Trump invoked the Sept. 11 attacks three times. Yet
Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 attackers, was not included on
the
list of countries whose citizens would be shut out. That reflects the deep
economic and security ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Mr.
Trump also has a personal financial link: In August 2015, just as his
campaign was gathering steam, the Trump Organization registered eight
companies
in Saudi Arabia that were linked to a hotel development in the city of
Jidda.
Pakistan, another country whose citizens have carried out attacks in the
United States, also ducked Mr. Trump’s list. Although Mr. Trump had a chummy
phone call with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif shortly after the election in
November, Pakistanis are nervously waiting to see if Mr. Trump will pull
American troops from neighboring Afghanistan.
“There’s a lot of concern,” said Zahid Hussain, a political analyst in
Islamabad, Pakistan. “For now, they want to keep quiet and see how things go.”
On Monday, King Abdullah II of Jordan is scheduled to meet in Washington
with members of the Trump administration and Congress, the first Arab leader
to do so since the executive order was issued.
Muslim solidarity once existed. As recently as the early 2000s, most
Muslim-majority countries agreed on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict
and sanctions against Iraq. Now, after several regional wars and a surge
in sectarian strife, that consensus has been shattered.
Multinational organizations that represent Muslims are viewed as toothless
entities. The head of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, which has
headquarters in Saudi Arabia, was forced to quit last fall after he made a
joke at the expense of Mr. Sisi of Egypt.
In the early days of Mr. Trump’s campaign, the Islamic scholars at Al
Azhar, the ancient seat of Islamic learning in Cairo, spoke out against the “
smear campaigns being launched against Muslims in America.” But the scholars
have yet to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s executive order, and even if they do,
few observers expect them to stray from official Egyptian government policy.
For many citizens of those countries, the docility of their leaders is
frustrating. Samer S. Shehata, of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in
Qatar, said that many of his students had already canceled their plans to
study in the United States. “I don’t think anyone is under any illusion that
if you are a Muslim or an Arab, you’re going to be treated different in
this Trump presidency,” he said.
Mr. Khouri, of the American University of Beirut, said the disconnect
between rulers and civilians in some countries spoke to the underlying anger
that fueled the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. “Even when this American move
is insulting Muslims and Islam, they do nothing about it,” he said. “That’
s going to create more anger, and more pressure, in the Arab world. It’s
terrible.”
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