Trump’s Executive Order Respecting Muslims: Motivated by Animus?

If Trump wants to exercise his statutory authority to limit entry of certain travelers into our country in the name of national security, he should a) comfort Muslim Americans that we are part of this country and have the same rights as everybody else — constitutional rights that he is sworn to uphold; b) explicitly disavow the anti-Muslim rhetoric of his campaign, acknowledging the peaceful and productive role that millions of Muslims play in the United States every day; c) promise us that he will not try to implement restrictions on Muslim American rights through legal legerdemain; d) promise us that the references to registries, identity cards, and internment camps were empty rhetoric and that he recognizes their unconstitutionality; e) not privilege immigrants or citizens of any religion over another in any executive order; f) promise to grant due process as guaranteed by the Constitution to any human being on American soil; g) ask all Americans to celebrate our religious freedoms as granted by the First Amendment, and to respect and honor each other in the public sphere through words and deeds; h) promise to stop spreading lies about nonexistent attacks and to combat myths about “Muslim neighborhoods” that need to be “secured and patrolled” (see Ted Cruz); i) assure Muslim American citizens that our grandparents, parents, and children in, say, CANADA may visit us per customary immigration procedures and vetting that respects human dignity; j) APOLOGIZE to us for frightening our children by alluding to or not contradicting his officials’ talk of registries, torture, surveillance, and camps; and k) fire Steve Bannon and dissociate himself from Breitbart and other white/Christian supremacist web sites.

On those conditions I would believe that his executive orders on immigration were being made in good faith based on our national security interest, and not out of an un-American hatred for a religious minority.

2/10/2017