By Scotlyn McConnell
No matter how much you don’t want to admit it, America has an underground factory of racism towards Muslims that has been pumping out hate speech since 9/11. With the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president becoming more and more real, how Muslims are treated in this country might get a whole lot worse. From tagging to tracking to deportation, it’s all scary. So, what will the country look like if Trump becomes president?
Trump has differing views when it comes to Muslim immigrants that are here legally and illegally, and how he feels about Muslims who were born here. I want to talk about how he feels about illegal immigrants first, since it’s a whole lot simpler than his views on legal immigrants. Trump doesn’t want illegal immigrants of any sort residing in our country. He has stated that they will be instantly deported. This is a little strange considering the fact that his current wife, Melania, has had a bit of an issue concerning the validity of her own immigration. He also has spoken about revoking birthright citizenship. This means that if a child is born here, but their parents are illegal immigrants, Trump would take away their citizenship and deport them.
His views on legal immigrants and Muslims that were born here are more lengthy and a bit more confusing. The reason they’re confusing is because Trump often backtracks and then backtracks his backtracks and so on and so forth. However, one thing he has stuck to is tagging all Muslims. He wants to do this in more ways than one. The first way is a public identifier that shouts, “HEY GUYS! I’M A MUSLIM!” which would be a patch or pin required to be worn on shirts or jackets. This sounds awfully familiar to how Hitler started out with Jews in 1930s Germany (which Trump has no problem being compared to, by the way).The second way he wants to tag Muslims is kind of a tracking situation. He will require all Muslims to register with local police so they can be “monitored.” According to NBC News, when asked about whether Muslims would be legally obligated to register, Trump replied, “They have to be — they have to be.” Trump also wants to take away mosques, the place of worship for Muslims.
As of now these are the policies that he seems to be unwavering on, but nothing is for sure when it comes to Donald Trump. You may be asking yourself why this matters. While I’m sure some of you are, most of you reading this are probably not Muslim, so this really doesn’t affect you. I mean, there are only 225 Muslims for every 100,000 people in Indiana and only 3.3 million in the entire country, so what’s the point? It’s not that bad, right? Well, friends, I’m sorry to say that yes, it is in fact, that bad.
While most of us are revving up to do our favorite fall activities, our Muslim friends are considering things that seem out of this realm. I personally have a friend who is considering a move to Canada, where his father already has work lined up. Others are considering things that seem even more insane. From Washington down to Florida, I have friends all over the country considering the need to flee.
We all need to keep in mind that just because a group is smaller, that doesn’t mean that that group doesn’t have a right to be human beings. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t vote for Trump — it’s not my place to decide that for you — but I do implore all of you to take every single little thing into consideration before election day rolls around. And I beg, please, please, don’t not vote at all.
