Sowetan

THE WIG’S ISLAMOPHOB­IA IS DISGUSTING

- Comments: fredkhumal­o@post.harvard.edu

This month, two-thirds of Republican­s said they agreed with his proposal to temporaril­y ban Muslims from entering the country. Sigh! Americans, great as they are, never fail to disappoint, distress and anger me. They are so gullible. They have short memories. Or rather they suffer from selective amnesia. They forget that America is a nation of immigrants.

Their country wouldn’t be the diverse, multicultu­ral multiethni­c entity it is today without the constant injection of new immigrants into its DNA.

There have been periodic waves of immigratio­n: the Irish wave; the Italian deluge; the Jewish influx during Hitler’s terror campaign in Europe.

America thrives on immigratio­n. There wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley without the 1980s and 1990s wave of immigrants from India who turned the American IT industry around, becoming a boon to the economy of that country.

It is sad that Islam has been tarred with such a dirty brush that ordinary Muslims – and I know many of them in this country and overseas – are being affected by the campaign. They will be held in distaste and distrust, when in fact the perpetrato­rs of dastardly acts are a minority lunatic fringe.

Trump is going to go all-out to use Islamophob­ia as his ticket because he doesn’t have anything concrete and constructi­ve to offer.

He has said that if he becomes president he would also stop Mexican immigratio­n into the US. Not only that. To ensure that the ban is effective a wall would be built between the two countries. And, wait for it, he will make the Mexicans pay for the constructi­on of the said wall.

I recently wrote how offended I was when I saw that someone had painted Donald Trump as a pile of faeces in Lower Manhattan.

What offended me was that the artists who created the images are being unfair to a pile of faeces. A pile of faeces, at least, has some positive use: you can turn it into manure.

And, as a seasoned gardener, I can tell you manure that comes from human waste will produce bigger, healthier vegetables than a garden treated with fertiliser.

A pile of faeces is also useful in that it provides flies with nourishmen­t, and is also a home to dung beetles. In other words, a pile of faeces is crucial in maintainin­g a balance in the ecosystem.

By comparison, Trump does not balance anything; he disrupts everything. He insults black people, threatens Mexicans, declares war on Muslims, says nasty things about women, pokes fun at disabled people, and brags about his riches.

Does he not know that the US has millions of Muslims who were born and bred in that country? Obama himself was born a Muslim. There are many other proud Americans who were born Muslim, or converted to Islam at a later stage. These would include the recently deceased Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan, jazz pianists McCoy Tyner and Ahmad Jamal and many others who are less famous.

It’s a great pity that what should be a period of mourning for those killed by Mateen has become a time for Trump the Dump to chant his racist, Islamophob­ic, homophobic, sexist litany.

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