First, lets look at Google’s auto complete function. Below is a screenshot from today showing you need to just enter two characters to get an option of Muslim Ban.

Google Muslim Ban

And it produces 37,000,000 results.

OK, now if you want to get into the details of the Executive Order, it is called “PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES”. I would recommend you to read the entire Executive Order in the link above.

The first interesting thing is that in the executive order, there is no mention of any specific religion. It does reference religion, religions, and religious 7 times. Do a search above on the actual article, you can see them there.

So, the most important part of this is Section 3, where it references what is to be done.

Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries of Particular Concern.

What this Executive Order is all about is suspending the issuance of Visas from ‘Countries of Particular Concern’. So, what is a ‘Country of Particular Concern’? That is a good question, and I’m not sure where this list of 7 countries comes from. I did find a New York Times article that calls out these 7 countries. They are: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. What I found interesting, is that when I did a search on ‘Countries of Particular Concern’, I did find a government site that listed these countries. It is uscirf.gov, and it lists Burma, Central African Republic, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Usbekistan, and Vietnam. At least these are the ones listed as Tier 1 countries at this time.

The real question is if this can realistically be called a “Muslim Ban”. First, I’ll admit that it is possible to target a specific demographic without using the name of that demographic. There is at least some evidence that suggests at least parts of the drug war were put in place to target war protesters and blacks. That is just one article that could be used to support the idea. I’m not saying it does support the idea, I’m just saying it could be a starting point to do more research into it.

There are a few things needed to support this executive order being called a “Muslim Ban”, they are that it should target a significant majority of Muslims, and it should Ban them. If we start by looking at what countries have the largest Muslim populations per wikipedia, the top 10 are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria and Morocco. Of these, only one is on the list of countries in the New York Times list is Pakistan. And on the other list is Egypt, Iran, Nigeria and Pakistan. Since this list of ‘Countries of Particular Concern’, don’t mirror very closely the most populous Muslim nations, it doesn’t seem likely that it is a ban on Muslims. As for the ban portion, according to the Executive Order, the term is ‘Suspension of Issuance of Visas’, which is not a ‘Ban’, but a suspension. If someone has their drivers license ‘Suspended’, it is usually for a particular time, after which time has expired, they can try and get it back. And that is exactly what is going on here. After a specific amount of time, those wanting a Visa to travel to the US, can reapply and be vetted again to try and gain entrance, if they pass the vetting.

Based on these simple facts, it is easy to call these ‘Muslim Ban’ headlines at best dishonest, and at worst, fake news. Let me know what you think on the contact page.