Some in the press have taken to referring to President’s Trump’s now-amended executive order on immigration as Muslim Ban 2.0, but this tag downplays the full scope of the White House’s revised directive.
The updated guidance, which temporarily bars immigration from six Middle Eastern countries, affects not just Muslims, but also Christians and certain minority groups in the Middle East, many of whom have also faced violent persecution as organizations like the Islamic State have grown in power.
By referring to the president’s immigration order as a “Muslim Ban 2.0,” national media are making it smaller than it really is, while simultaneously doing a disservice to persecuted Christians and other minority groups in the Middle East.
To be clear, “Muslim Ban 2.0” is just an updated version of what national media called Trump’s immigration order when it was first introduced on Jan. 27.
At the time, Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Archeparchy of Erbil, Iraq, argued the term did a great disservice to Middle-Eastern Christians and other minority groups.
“[A]ll those who cry out that this is a ‘Muslim Ban’ – especially now that it has been clarified that it is not – should understand clearly that when they do this, they are hurting we Christians specifically and putting us at greater risk. The executive order has clearly affected Christians and Yazidis and others as well as Muslims,” he said in a Crux interview published on Feb. 2.
Though the order has been amended since Archbishop Warda’s interview, the immigration law still affects Christian and minority groups, meaning the “Muslim Ban 2.0” label continues to downplay the enormity of the issue. Further, because the press’ preferred moniker for Trump’s immigration order has not really changed with its amended language, the Archbishop’s criticism for “Muslim ban” is still relevant.
“Most Americans have no concept of what it was like to live as a Yazidi or Christian or other minority as ISIS invaded. Our people had the option to flee, to convert, or to be killed, and many were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable. But there were none of these protests then of ISIS’s religious test,” the Archbishop said earlier this month.
If Christians are targeted precisely because of their faith, he asked, then why is it so crazy to ask that they should be given some sort of priority status?
“Our people lost everything because of their faith – they were targeted for their faith, just like the Yazidis and others too,” he said. “Now these protesters are saying that religion should not matter at all, even though someone was persecuted for their faith, even though persecution based on religion is one of the grounds for refugee status in the UN treaty on refugees.”
Archbishop Warda concluded, “[I]t is very hard for me to understand why comfortable people in the West think those who are struggling to survive against genocide, and whose communities are at extreme risk of disappearing completely, should not get some special consideration. We are an ancient people on the verge of extinction because of our commitment to our faith. Will anybody protest for us?”
Considering Trump’s amended immigration guidance continues to affect more than just Muslims, one wonders why national media continue to use a term downplaying the number of people impacted by the order.
