Trump
lies about EO Travel Ban
What Trump said about
travel ban is false
By Reza Aslan
Updated 1402 GMT (2202
HKT) January 30, 2017
·
President Donald Trump
issues a statement Sunday after his travel ban was roundly criticized
·
·
Aslan: The ban is
about religion, not about fighting terrorism
Reza Aslan is the
author of "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" and the
host of CNN's new original series "Believer With Reza Aslan," which premieres at 10 p.m. ET March 5.
The views expressed are his own.
(CNN)Donald Trump released a statement Sunday afternoon in response
to the massive protests that have erupted across the country in response to his
latest executive order freezing all refugees from Syria and banning entry to
foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Reza Aslan
"To be clear," the statement read,
"this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting. This is not
about religion - this is about terror and keeping our country safe."
As we have come to expect from Donald Trump,
nearly every word of that sentence is false.
It is a Muslim
ban. Rudy Giuliani admitted as much in talking about its origins on Fox News. "I'll tell you
the whole story," he said. "So, when [Trump] announced it he said
"Muslim ban." He called me up, he said, 'Put a commission together.
Show me the right way to do it legally.'"
It is about religion. Trump said so on Christian Broadcast
Network when he vowed that he would allow Christians to enter from the banned
countries list but not Muslims. "If you were a Muslim, you could come
in," Trump said, "but if you were a Christian, it was almost
impossible," Trump said of our refugee system. This is, of course, another
lie. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016 the United States brought in 37,521 Christian
refugees and 38,901 Muslims refugees.
Join author and religious scholar Reza Aslan
as he immerses himself in the world's most fascinating faith-based groups.
Explore CNN's "Believer
With Reza Aslan," starting at 10 p.m. ET March 5.
It is not about
terror. There is no great fear
of terrorism from refugees. Of the 784,000 refugees resettled in the United
States over the last 15 years, exactly three have been arrested for planning
terrorist activities, according to a Cato Institute report by Alex Nowrasteh.
Of the 3,252,493 refugees admitted into the
country from 1975 to 2016, 20 of them took part in terrorism. That's 0.00062%.
Of those 20, three were successful in actually
carrying out the terror attack. Those three attacks killed a total of three
people.
In fact, the likelihood of being killed in a
terrorist attack perpetrated by an immigrant is 1 in 3.6 million, and that includes
the total deaths in the attacks of 9/11.
This is not about
keeping our country safe. Between 1975 and 2016, exactly zero Americans were killed on US
soil by foreign nationals from any of the seven countries in Trump's banned
list.
However, the ban does include our most vital
ally in the fight against ISIS, Iraq. That country has now threatened to retaliate against the executive order by banning US
nationals from entering Iraq, putting America's war against ISIS in great
peril.
As the former counterterrorism official Daniel
Benjamin put it, "For the life
of me, I don't see why we would want to alienate the Iraqis when they are the
ground force against ISIS."
So, to be clear, this is a Muslim ban. It is
about religion. It is not about terror. And it does not keep our country safe.
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