Donald Trump has retweeted several anti-islam posts on Twitter, stirring up controversy as to whether this is an appropriate thing for the president to do. These retweets are videos with titles such as "Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!". These tweets reveal actions that radical islamic extremists are doing to other people and Trump claims that retweeting these posts are necessary in order to bring attention to the extreme and violent nature of radical islam. Critics of this argue that Trump retweeting these posts implies that Trump believes that these actions are commonplace in the muslim community and are giving a bad image to Islam by suggesting that all muslims have such behavior. My opinion is that there are a lot of radical muslims and the idea that radical muslims are a "tiny minority" is untrue because in fact there are millions of muslims around the world who believe in radical ideas. Over 90% of the people in several islamic countries support sharia law, a radical system of law where those who insult or disobey parts of their religion have severe punishments. It is important to realize the real danger of radical islam because this sector of the population is not nearly as small as some make it out to be and they have the potential to cause a lot of conflicts and problems. This being said, saying that muslims as a general group are violent and hold radical beliefs would be unfair and inaccurate because in fact there are many muslims, especially in the US who are peaceful and do not have radical views, so suggesting that muslims as a whole are violent and intolerant would be false and places an unfair stigma on Islam itself.
What do you guys think of Trump's retweets?
How do you think we should approach radical Islam and Islam as a whole?
17 comments:
I am not supportive at all of his retweets especially because it is clear that the intent behind it was to attack muslims. I agree with your thoughts on how it is unfair to judge all muslims based on a select group of people. Such actions from our own president are very disappointing and I think he has a duty to be trying to actually take action against radical Islam rather than just going against and saying rude things about them. As for handling Radical Islam, I think the first thing that should happen is that we should actually try to solve the problem rather than just attacking all Muslims for this one group of people.
If you look at the trends of the world, deaths due to purposeful violence are on the decline, and Trump's attention calling to this Islamist mob is unrepresentative of both global trends and Muslims. I think that as President, Trump has more important items on his shoulders than tweeting about mobs, like tax reform, nuclear diplomacy, or actually solving the problem he tweets about. Trump's tweets seem to be getting out of hand, and he should consider the consequences of his words.
I agree with both Kamal and Max in more benefits would derive from President Trump's attention elsewhere. Especially because he is the President, his opinion on Islam will be well documented and spread, which only reinforces erroneous perceptions on Muslims. In my opinion, he seems like a child throwing a tantrum over an issue he does not thoroughly comprehend. Like Kamal said, if Trump had the genuine desire to alleviate the consequences of those who practice "Radical Islam," he would attempt to solve the root of the problem which, according to what I've learned from a psychology textbook and Mr. Corti (hopefully my memory serves me correctly, but correct me if I'm wrong), is largely influenced by misinformation and poverty.
Is President Trump going to finally try and unite the country instead of tearing it apart tweet by tweet? If he doesn't he should immediately resign in disgrace!
As the face of America, it's absolutely horrid to retweet videos from such a group, especially in a culture that has emphasized religious tolerance for almost the entirety of United States history. The worst part is that, inevitably, Republicans who idolize Trump will begin to further support acts of racism and bigotry as this hatred becomes the new normal.
As cliche as this sounds, I agree with the comments above. Trump is making America and himself look like fools in front of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if any of the groups he's attacking attacks us. It just proves that not everyone should run for office.
I completely agree with Nora. I feel the retweeting of these tweets was ill-timed as Trump is currently attempting to pass his travel ban, and this does nothing but hurt him by providing evidence of a religious animus in his quest to isolate Muslims from this country. These tweets were published by a right-wing British organization, whose leader has a criminal history, and this action has support from the likes of David Duke, not exactly helping Trump considering his supporters' histories. Furthermore, I see Trump's support of these tweets as hypocritical in a way. For a man sworn to protect national interests and isolate this country from others, he does tend to take a great deal of interest in the affairs of other countries/regions when it suits him fit.
As anyone else would say, violence supported by cherry-picking/manipulating parts of religion is not right. I oppose extremism like any other rational Muslim or human being, but Islam is a religion, like Christianity, and Judaism that is deserving to be part of a society free from discrimination.
However, I was just wondering if you, John, had any statistics about the size of this minority of radicals. Also, I found this article from the Washington Post to be a great help as I noticed some inaccuracies in your definition and explanation of Sharia. Just to clarify, Sharia is not Islamic law, but rather philosophy, and not meant to replace civil law. Nor is Sharia the law in these Muslim countries you mention, it is an influence. Fiqh is the interpretation of Sharia and is not meant to speak for God (with the schools of thought realizing this), and is used as the basis for law to be applied for the general welfare of the entire public, or Siyasa. As you can see, it is not that Sharia is extremist in nature, rather how people interpret it and model their lives after their perverse interpretations being the problem.
"Five Myths About Sharia"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-sharia/2016/06/24/7e3efb7a-31ef-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?utm_term=.c347feff3b66
I think Trump's retweets are absurd and unethical. His tweet of several anti-islam post are just going to make more people think that Islamists are terrible people and that people should do something about them. In reality, not all people of Islam should be blamed. It is simply a religion that has a distinct belief system. These tweets came from our president, Trump, is very disappointing due to his level of immaturity by attacking muslims. Trump is just a crazy guy.
Like many of the other comments above, I think that Trump's retweeting of this far right group is inappropriate and shows his bias. In addition, I think a more effective way for Trump to increase awareness of radical Islamic terrorism would be to retweet the tweets of trustworthy media sources. There are most definitely stories about horrible bombings and attacks by radical Islamic terrorists nearly everyday on those new sources, although they are not as sensationalized as the video titles ("Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!").
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/
There is a graph here that shows that a majority of muslims in over 20 countries support making sharia law the law of the land. Whether it is a system of law or not you cannot deny that sharia has many radical aspects to it which many people unfortunately follow.
There's no doubt that radical Islam terrorisms of course exists and I'm not going to dispute the statistics that John posted but what I do have an issue about is the content of the twitter posts that Trump is tweeting. He's retweeting posts that are proven to be from a false news source; he's literally the fake news.
Trump's tweets are unprofessional. Whether or not he is right in believing what he believes is not relevant when posting from the social media account of the leader of the free world. He shouldn't be showing us clickbait headlines and graphic videos.
Trumps tweets here are not wrong in the fact that Islamic Terrorism is a threat and that Islamic mobs do terrible things, but I believe that this has already been known to most people. I also understand the viewpoint in which people believe Trump is trying to imply that this is inhumane behavior is common in Muslim places. His re tweets on this topic are unnecessary and will probably cause more unjust fear of Muslims.
I agree with Nick K. I also think that many people in this comments section are interpreting Trump's retweet to mean things that are not even implied so I would caution against that. I think the only goal of Trump that can be derived without extrapolation is that through posting this tweet he is trying to bring awareness to the country of the issue of Islamic Terrorism and show that he is against Islamic terrorists. Statistically speaking, this group is responsible for more terrorist attacks than any other group so I also agree that this is a problem and don't see anything wrong with Trump's tweet. The only thing that could possibly be an issue is that the tweets were anti-Islamic in general, but Trump commented against radical Islam which I hope everyone can agree needs to be dealt with.
Trump is being very irresponsible, he should be trying to lead our nation. Currently he is only advocating the violent aspects of these few, while he should be trying to bring attention to these issues by supporting the Muslims who are also afraid of groups such as ISIS.
Trump's goals and intentions are good, but the tweets are unnecessary. People already understand the dangers of radical Islam, and even his goal is to raise awareness, the right way to do it is definitely not to retweet videos on twitter. However, it is his right to post what he wants on twitter.
Radical Islam is a terrible problem. It brainwashes people into being absolute savages, and forces children into a world of evil. As a country, we need to approach it with no mercy, and do everything we can to eradicate it.
As a leader of this country, it is absolutely inappropriate and unjustifiable for Trump to be retweeting such posts. The Islamic faith is one of peace, not radical/violent behavior. Prior to making accusations and shaming an entire group of people based on their religious beliefs, one must educate themselves and be aware that while there are individuals who practice radical behavior, this does not represent all Muslims. If one looks at the facts, whites have committed more acts of terror within their own country in the past couple of years. We, as a nation, have witnessed more mass shootings committed by white men than crimes committed by those who practice the Islamic faith. Yes, I believe the issue of terrorism must be addressed and it cannot be ignored, but belittling an entire section of the population for being Muslim is NOT the solution and instead prevents the nation from making progress. EDUCATE first, then ACT.
I am in complete agreement with Alexa. It was extremely inappropriate for Trump to retweet those radical anti-muslim videos. Doing so will only increase animosity and tension between muslims and non-muslims in this country. If he wants to bring awareness to terrorism in the United States, how about he speaks out more against acts of terror perpetrated by Americans, of which there are plenty to choose from. To continue to blame an entire group of people for the actions of a few is an absurd notion, no matter the scenario. These retweets will only continue to enable close-minded, racist people to do so. I am saddened that today in our country, one in which we should be inclined to promote diversity and tolerance, that we have a leader who just seems so uninformed on these topics and how they are affecting the people of the United States, specifically the many muslims in our country.
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