About Muslims being banned from entering the US

I haven’t formed any strong opinion about Muslims from certain countries being banned from entering the US. I’m neither for it not against it because frankly, I haven’t done much reading on this to make a strong opinion.

But do observe how heartfelt commentaries are being made about very deserving Muslim people not being able to visit the US or even some fathers not being able to visit their families because they are Muslims.

Someone posted on Twitter that said Sergey Brin’s parents came to the US in order to escape religious persecution and if they hadn’t come, the country wouldn’t have had such a big technology company. This is true. I maybe not (the religious persecution part) — I don’t know the real story.

Then I read about a Muslim professional whose family is in the US but he lives in the UK because of his business. He contributes to the society in the US by paying taxes and being a part of the society fruitfully. I don’t know why, maybe because of the ban — I’m not sure if Muslims from Britain our banned or not — now he cannot visit his family and he was lamenting the fact that he may have to tell his family that he won’t be visiting them soon.

I thought there are only 7 countries from where Muslims cannot visit the US. Even from Pakistan people can visit America. So I’m still trying to make sense of all this fuss.

The Internet is full of such stories and my heart goes out to people narrating the stories of people and families going through these experiences.

What bothers me is, you never find such heartfelt stories when atrocities all over the world take place in the name of religion. Things wouldn’t have come to such a state had people hadn’t remained silent about Islamic terrorism that have killed millions all over the world and uprooted hundreds of thousands of families and destroyed countries and decimated histories. Entire cultures and traditions have been ravaged.

Medieval, dark ages atrocities have been committed on people in the modern times when we don’t even want to hurt bulls and ban traditions like the Jallikattu in the name of animal rights (nothing wrong in that).

There haven’t been any heartfelt stories for victims of Islamic terrorism.

For example, there haven’t been heartfelt stories about all those Kashmiri Pandits who had to leave the land their ancestors have lived on for centuries. There haven’t been heartfelt stories about people in West Bengal who cannot celebrate their centuries-old festivals because people of another community feel offended. There are no heartfelt stories on people’s lifestyles being changed because some people are not comfortable with the way the others live. There are no heartfelt stories on the victims of the perpetual victimhood.

So, all this seems a bit lopsided, a bit skewed. I think this lopsidedness is at the crux of the problem. If this lopsidedness hadn’t existed, maybe Donald Trump wouldn’t have happened.

Just think, before you cause more damage.