The Trump ban list and Islam

A few days ago, freshly-minted United States President Donald Trump released a list of seven Muslim countries whose citizens have been temporarily banned from visiting the U.S. As expected, the list has generated a lot of controversies from those who believe that the ban contravenes the basic principle of tolerance upon which America was built.
   
I am of the view that condemning the action of the U.S. president without taking a wholistic look at the issues which informed it amounts to playing to the gallery.
   
During the electioneering-campaign, Trump promised he would restrict Muslims’ coming into his country if he won the election. He campaigned and got elected on the strength of those promises. Which means, the American people who elected him actually wanted him to bar Muslims from coming to America. How can any reasonable person now expect the U.S. president to renege on his campaign promises to his own people just to please the world?  Is president Trump’s first duty no longer to the people who elected him?

How many times have the so-called moderates protested against any of the numerous terrorist attacks carried out by their radical Muslims around the world?
 
But, now, they are all protesting against the Trump list even when it was their conspiracy of silence which connotes complicity in those attacks that birthed the Trump list.
 
As long as the larger population of Muslims who claim to be peaceful find it difficult to openly condemn the mindless bloodletting the few radical ones carry out in the name of a great, peaceful, the larger Muslim population will always remain irrelevant and the criminal activities of those few extremists will continue to determine how Islam is viewed by the rest of the world!
   
So, instead of wallowing in self-pity, the world needs to do more to combat Islamic fundamentalism. So far, all are not doing much in that regard. President Trump is not to blame. Radical Islam and the silence of the moderate Muslims in the face of the senseless killings are to blame for all these.
 
The earlier the world admits that something is fundamentally wrong with some teachings especially the violent tendencies and work towards genuine reforms to take out those violent elements and teachings from where terrorists have continued to draw their inspiration, the better for Islam and the rest of the human race!
Ogbu, a social analyst, wrote from Port Harcourt.