Trump's ban on Muslims is divisive and dangerous.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets throughout Britain last night to protest against Donald Trump’s declaration of war on Muslims. That’s what the ban on Muslim countries amounts to. 1.5m people in the UK signed a petition to prevent Trump’s “state visit” to our shores and parliament voted unanimously to repeal Trump’s immigration ban, leaving Theresa May isolated in her sycophantic, shameful acquiesce.

This show of solidarity and defiance against the US miscreant affords some much needed succour to my jaded soul. This country will not be divided by hate and fear.

Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Donald Trump’s contempt for human rights is not breaking news, but his executive ban on Muslims shows a chilling incognisance of history, human psychology and national security. Far from being safer, by depicting all Muslims as suspected terrorists, Trump is making the world a more dangerous place. His dehumanisation of an entire people based on their religion is sinister and dangerous.

Dehumanization negates the humanity of people different to us, who are portrayed as imbecilic and sub-human. It desensitises us to the plight of “other” and makes the conditions for discrimination and oppression possible. Slavery, the Holocaust, the Rwanda and (ongoing) Darfur genocides are just some examples of how the dehumanisation of people, based on colour or creed, can become justification for persecution and ethnic cleansing.

In order to diffuse the dirty bomb of hate that Trump has detonated, we must counter the narrative that conflates Islam with terrorism. Throughout the reporting of “the troubles in Northern Ireland”, I never heard the words “Protestant” or “Catholic” followed by the word “fundamentalist”.  Not since the holocaust have human beings been so universally demonised because of their religion. Standing by and allowing it to happen again would be unconscionable.

Dehumanisation is expedited with stories depicting the outgroup as evil. When we have little contact with people who are different to us, we become susceptible to the shorthand of stereotypes, which is why we need to get out more and share our positive stories.

At seventeen, in my naivety, I decided to trek across Europe (from Ireland) to visit my friend who was au pairing in Switzerland. The route involved two boats and three trains. On the final leg, I was exhausted and, having chatted to brothers (19 and 20) on the Harry Potter style train for a couple of hours, I dropped off. They watched over me while I slept and missed their stop so that I could be protected and not disturbed. I was struck by their respect for me as a young woman. They were Moroccan Muslims.

In response to Trump’s Muslim ban, Jeremy Greenstock, a former chair of the UN Security Council’s counter-terrorism committee, said  “I don’t think Islamic terrorism is an existential threat to western democracy. If there is to be a global anti-terrorist coalition that is effective, it’s got to deal with some of the causes of it, rather than the symptoms. It’s got to deal with governance in the Middle East.

There’s no evidence that the 7 banned countries pose a terrorist threat in the US, but there is proof that hate speech incites violence and divides communities, which does undermine national security.

In just ten days of Trump’s presidential win in November, 900 hate crimes were documented, 40% of which invoked Trump’s name. 

On Sunday night, 6 Muslims were killed and 8 injured when a Mosque was attacked in what Canadian Prime Minister, Justine Trudeau, called a terrorist attack. The right wing media here and in the US initially reported the gunman as being a Moroccan Muslim, with Trump’s press officer citing it as justification for the ban on “bad dudes”. These claims were false and a suspected white supremacist has now been charged.

In the UK, the Global Terrorism Index reported that the number of terrorism fatalities had steadily grown since the Iraq war and the former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, said the Iraq invasion led to a huge increase in the terrorist threat to the UK.

Every pound of Muslim flesh that Trump and May feed the far right unpicks another seam in the increasingly fragile fabric that binds our communities together. Shame on Theresa May for her complicity.