Like Donald Trump, the terror group seems to have a mechanism for distinguishing the ‘other’ from the ‘own’
RAHIM YAR KHAN: This letter is in response to your editorial “Donald the Toxic” (December 11). Donald Trump’s life documents the multiple facets of his misogyny and racism, but he seriously lags behind intellectually, even otherwise. Consider his wish to prevent Muslims from entering the US. I would not count on his real estate workers to make him a faith-detecting machine anytime soon. He may find inspiration in the Islamic State (IS) though. The terror group seems to have a mechanism for distinguishing the ‘other’ from the ‘own’. After learning the art from Master Baghdadi, all Trump would need to do is reverse the categories.
But wait — the IS thought the victims of the Paris attacks constituted the ‘other’, but still ended up killing a few Muslims — albeit, amidst the ‘infidels’. How will Trump emulate the IS’s mechanism of figuring out the ‘other’? Through people’s ethnicities, perhaps? But even a country like Slovenia, from where his wife hails, has a 2.4 per cent Muslim population. Maybe Trump should learn to live with us. We, the ‘other’ of his world, constituting people of all faiths, are happy to live as a family, even with hatemongers like him around.
Usman Masood
Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2015.
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