Fault lines in the US are there for all to see

It is foolish to declare Donald Trump an outlier in American political life, argues HA Hellyer

The Republican debate on Tuesday showed that Mr Trump’s engagement in fear-mongering and rabble-rousing is a favourite tactic among many of the Republican front-runners. Robyn Beck / AFP Photo

Last week, much of the international media was up in arms about the comments of Donald Trump, who suggested an indefinite ban on Muslims from entering the US. But it would be foolish to declare Mr Trump as an outlier in American political life. On the contrary, the Republican debate aired on Tuesday showed that Mr Trump’s engagement in fear-mongering and rabble-rousing is a favourite tactic among many of the Republican front runners. That is dangerous, regardless of who wins the nomination, or who eventually becomes US president.

Mr Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims should have been met with a clear rejection, based on moral principle, from the entire Republican leadership. That is the message that was required to ensure such divisive rhetoric would be staved off from that prize of legitimacy it seeks in public life.

Instead, the likes of Rick Santorum, another candidate for the Republican nomination, declared Mr Trump’s comments weren’t about Muslims at all – rather, they were about the Obama administration and its immigration policies.

Others argued that the ban was unworkable, as if the practicalities of the ban could be overcome, the moral issues of rejecting entry into the US on the basis of religious identity would simply be absent. But such was the tenor of the Republican debate – and it resonates with a significant proportion of the American electorate.

The rhetoric went far beyond that, though. It used to be on the far fringes of the right-wing where one might witness the description of Islam as an ideology, rather than a religion. But on Tuesday, that suggestion was offered as fact by one of the candidates, with little objection from nearly all of the rest. And, as Rick Santorum argued, if Islam was actually an “ideology”, it did not deserve constitutional protection under the notion of “freedom of religion”.

Such commentary would be laughable, if it wasn’t so incredibly precarious: the stigmatisation of millions of Muslims in the US was clear and obvious on the third most watched primary presidential debate of all time.

In terms of what it failed to mention as much as what it did mention, the debate was concerning. What it failed to mention was that the single largest source of violence against American citizens in the US often comes from mass shootings that have nothing to do with Islamist militancy.

On the contrary, they are often perpetrated by Americans who have easy access to guns, in a country where there are literally more guns than human beings. The fear-mongering about radical militancy, which then becomes converted into fear-mongering about Islam as a religion (and not simply the radical perversion of it) is specific and directed. Nothing remotely as much as urgency was voiced about the killing of citizens through gun violence – indeed, it didn’t even warrant a single mention.

But this is the nature of the political debate – and not just in the US.

Earlier this week, Ann Coulter, an infamous conservative commentator, was a guest on the UK’s leading current affairs programme, Newsnight.

Asked about her comments about describing Arabs as “rag-heads and camel-jockeys”, Ms Coulter said that these were jokes and the television host failed to challenge her on her supposition that these bigoted comments were somehow humorous.

One could argue that it was sufficient to allow Ms Coulter to display her prejudice in full view, but such comments cannot be made, and should not be made, about Jews or Africans-Americans.

Yet, the realm of acceptable discourse – even if one deems it as somewhat distasteful – is much larger when it comes to the Arab world and Muslim communities. Newsnight, after all, is not a peripheral right-wing talk show on the internet – but a flagship BBC news programme.

There are serious fault lines being exposed in our societies. Describing the territory that ISIL holds as a “caliphate” that must be destroyed to avoid Muslims worldwide recognising its legitimacy, as one of the Republican candidates did, imbues ISIL with a legitimacy that the group craves. But it has no legitimacy, save for its indescribably small, if incredibly dangerous, number of followers. Yet, the argument on its own give succour to anti-Muslim bigots in the United States to persist in their prejudice – and Ms Coulter’s comments encourages anti-Arab racists to escape accountability by claiming humour.

At a time when ISIL is trying to inspire division and separation in our societies, we ought not be jumping to censor figures in political life – that only allows the problem to persist beneath the surface.

Collectively we have a responsibility to respond to such deleterious speech with decent speech and make it clear to our own communities that hate speech has no place in public life. And fear-mongering is no substitute for an effective argument.

Dr HA Hellyer is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC

On Twitter: @hahellyer