The signing of a new executive order targeting Moslem refugees and migrants was a major victory for ISIS and the other fundamentalist terrorist groups. Effectively #Donald Trump proved to them that the United States is fighting a war against Islam. The effect of the decision may well be to encourage marginalized Moslems in Western countries, especially the easily influenced youth, to enroll with the groups that are the major cause of refugees that are fleeing the hot spots targeted in the order such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

War on Terror

With a stroke of his pen Donald Trump gave the world apparent proof that there is a war against Islam , at least in the eyes of the terrorists and even some moderate Moslems around the world.

In addition, this order does nothing to address the issues that led to the rise of these fundamentalist groups. The problems of huge gaps in wages and quality of life within many Moslem countries must be addressed in order to limit recruits to the fundamentalists. Moslems must be helped to integrate in their new countries of residence and not treated as outsiders even after two or three generations as occurs in France and Germany. Worse still the decision to target the Moslem refugees and migrants shows that the newly installed President and his Administration have learnt nothing from the European experiences during the tragic years of left wing and Irish terrorism during the 1970s and 1980s.

In particular the Italian and German experiences with the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction must be studied because they were defeated by separating the the terrorists from their base support and removing the conditions that led young people to take up armed conflict against their own countries.

Inclusion not exclusion

#ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram and the other groups will not be defeated by repression, but by openness to the moderate elements of the Moslem population.

Using discrimination and restrictions will only increase the alienation that leads young, often weak members of the Western countries to seek a solution in such extremists groups. Tragically all too often they learn too late that there is no solution in such groups.

The United States and the Western country will not win the war on Terrorism with tactics of exclusion, but with the tactics of inclusion.

The economically rich countries must encourage and work with the moderate political and religious Moslem leaders. They must encourage education in the countries at risk of terrorism and help them to defeat the elements that wish to divide the world into “us and them”.

The blocking of Moslems from these countries has only made the ISIS’s job of recruiting even easier and thus ensuring that the war against terror begun on 9/11 and not yet finished will be even longer and bloodier.