"Middle Eastern Christians relish this: we can finally call Muslims out on their hypocrisy but, more importantly, we have a voice."
Donald Trump is good for Middle Eastern Christians
by Najwa Najib,
Medium, October 29, 2016
(h/t Jihad Watch)
The 2016 presidential election has turned into a breeding ground for op-eds about every possible topic under the sun, though most focus on Donald Trump and the supposed danger he poses to the world in general and to Muslims in particular. People who have absolutely no right to speak on topics of domestic policy, foreign policy, Islam, whatever, have suddenly been given soapboxes. Where these used to be targets at which we all mostly rolled our eyes, they are now elevated.
Off the top of my head, I can think of big names with big things to say about Donald Trump’s policies. Louis CK compares Trump’s run to
“being Germany in the ’30s,” where apparently they did not “[see] the shit coming”. In a New York Times op-ed, Aziz Ansari, not a practicing Muslim,
fears for his Muslim family’s safety because he thinks that, in rounding 0.03% of Muslims being investigated for potential ISIS extremism down to 0, those 1,000 under investigation will do the same damage as 0 extremists could. Jill Soloway, creator of a show no one wants to watch, said in the press room following her Emmy win that
“any moment [she has] to call Trump out to being an inheritor to Hitler, [she] will,” because Trump apparently ‘otherises’ Muslims. This defence of Muslims comes after screaming
“topple the patriarchy” twice on stage during the actual show. She defended Islam, the inherently patriarchal religion whose adherents gruesomely and happily punish the “Jewish people, queer folk, trans folk” she patted herself on the back for featuring on her television show in her Emmy acceptance speech. Clearly, Jill Soloway’s grasp of Islam is matched only by Aziz Ansari’s statistical genius and Louis CK’s history knowledge.
While simultaneously pushing the narrative that Donald Trump’s candidacy would not have been possible without the media — apparently, the Hollywood elite feel that Donald Trump’s history-making run for President is due to Celebrity Apprentice and not to a widespread fatigue of the self-congratulating same-old same-old — the media also pushes the notion that Donald Trump is Hitler. Donald Trump is Hitler on the Emmys stage. Donald Trump is Hitler in the New York Times. Donald Trump is Hitler in newsletters. Donald Trump is Hitler anywhere that statement can be repeated, over and over again, unopposed and unchallenged.
Other more invested people can write and have written about how of course Donald Trump is not Hitler, about the sheer audacity of saying such a thing about a man whose daughter and grandchildren are Jewish. Those people might also explain how Führer Trump could only have run and won in 2016 because of that audacity, because of what the media pass for truth, because of the death of journalistic integrity.
But this piece is not a defence of Donald Trump.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to write passionately and honestly about anything, even about the continued genocide and erasure of my people and of all Middle Eastern Christian peoples. Where does this lament for my people fit in a world where click-bait and listicles pollute what’s left of journalism and where it seems almost everyone operates under the notion that “Donald Trump is literally Hitler”?
My people — Middle Eastern and North African Christians, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Coptic, Catholic, Orthodox, etc. — where do we fit?