By Patricia Lee Sharpe
So Trump won’t be able to greet the new mayor of London at the White house—or even let him into the country—because he’s a Muslim.
That’s only the beginning—think of all the other leaders who’ll be on the persona non grata list for religious reasons.
Official representatives of all Muslim majority countries would be taboo—and I suppose their embassies would have to be closed, too. That’s Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives, for starters. I hardly need to mention Iran, but we’d also have to sever communications with the entire Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That would seriously complicate the matter of trying to buffer Israel from its Muslim neighbors, including the Palestinians.
It gets worse. Muslims are a minority in India, but Indian officials, civilian and military, may be Muslim as well as Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh or even Christian, given the fact that freedom of religion still thrives in India despite the worst efforts of Hindu nationalists. Four Indian presidents have been Muslims, including A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the most recent, who served for the usual term of five years. Is it possible that a President Trump would refuse to entertain the Head of State of the world’s largest democracy if he were Muslim?
Wow! How could I have omitted Turkey? One more Muslim president who won’t be able to visit the White House during a Trump presidency.
And whoops! another complication. Nigeria is fairly equally divided between Christians and Muslims. The previous president was Christian, but the incumbent is a Muslim. Does that make America a no-go place for the leader of the largest country in Africa?
Now that I think of it, Trump might want to institute a purge of the Muslims who happen to have been elected to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In all cases, the majority of their supporters would have been non-Muslims, but that, I suppose, wouldn’t matter, to the man who campaigns always as “I” and never as “we.” That pronoun problem alone should frighten Americans. Most of us don’t want presidents who are nothing but puppets of a party, but a potential president who represents only himself and his own unpredictable whims is hardly a confidence-building figure.
On the other hand, with so many embassies forced to vacate fine properties in choice D.C. neighborhoods, I’m sure that Casino Don will have no trouble finding buyers and working out great deals. For that matter, how about a set of cute little boutique hotels he could call the Trumpettes?
