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Feb. 1, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
11:05
Was It a Muslim Ban? | DIRECT MESSAGE | Rubin Report
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dave rubin
11:03
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dave rubin
All right, we have to talk about the so-called Muslim ban today.
Before I say anything else I want to be absolutely 100% crystal clear on one simple fact.
I am completely and fervently against any ban on immigrants based solely on their religion, whatever that religion may be.
I will always judge people as individuals, not as the collective, and I certainly don't plan on stopping that now as this fight over refugees and immigration is just heating up.
Within any group there are subgroups of people, and often it's these very subgroups that contain the most vulnerable populations such as free thinkers, gays and atheists.
So just so the trolls get it absolutely right, I, Dave Rubin, am 100% against any blanket ban which targets all Muslim people and I would feel exactly the same way if it was targeting any other religion.
OK, so we know that this refugee issue is one of the topics where no matter what anyone says, and definitely in my case, I'm going to get hate from both the extreme left and the extreme right.
Actually, the more hate that I get from both sides, the more I realize that I'm doing the right thing because nuance, honesty and logic are completely lost.
on those who stay on the dogmatic fringes.
So before I share my thoughts, I thought it would be important that we actually separate
some facts from fiction and discuss what's actually in Trump's executive order.
I've got the whole text of the order right here and yeah, I actually read the whole thing,
unlike most of the people screaming about it online.
So despite what the hashtag on Twitter might tell you, this is not a Muslim ban.
First off, the word Muslim isn't in the text of the order, not even once, and you'd think that if you were exclusively trying to ban people of one religion from entering the country, you'd have to cite which religion you're talking about.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the ban doesn't include any of the five most populous Muslim countries, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria.
So if this was exclusively a Muslim ban, it does stand to reason it would include these nations, which add up to roughly 750 million people.
So if it's a Muslim ban, it's excluding more than half of the Muslims in the world.
This doesn't mean that there aren't some valid questions about the list of countries which are banned, as well as some glaring omissions in this executive order.
The 7 countries listed in the order are Syria, Libya, Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq.
All of these countries are involved in heavy sectarian violence, some of which is a direct result of American intervention without question.
To be clear though, no major terrorist attack has happened on American soil from anyone from these 7 countries currently on the banned list.
At the same time, there are omissions on the list, most notably Saudi Arabia, which 19 of the 21 9-11 hijackers were from.
The argument I've heard on this is that the ban applies to current conflict zones, and as odious as the Saudi government may be, the country isn't a war zone.
I don't really see how this is related to whether extremists are coming out of the country, but that seems to be the argument being made.
There are also many questions as to whether Trump's business ties in countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia were at least part of the reason they were left off the list.
We know for a fact that Turkey is letting ISIS fighters into Europe through its borders, and we know that Saudi Arabia is home to the world's most fervent strain of Sunni Wahhabism.
So, a quick recap so far.
We have a ban on nationals from countries which are currently hotbeds for terrorism, though the list is incomplete at best and arbitrary or ill-conceived at worst.
Up next is whether this is an actual ban or not.
From reading the document, and again, I read it, as well as analysis from other sources that I generally trust, there is no way that this order, at the moment, as it is written right now, is some kind of permanent ban on people from the countries listed.
It's a 90 day ban on people from those 7 countries and a total temporary stop of our refugee admission system for 120 days so the vetting system and other processes can be reviewed.
The one exception to this temporary stop is for Syrian refugees who are being banned indefinitely.
Perhaps this will lead to Trump trying to actually ban all foreign nationals from these countries or even expanding it to other countries, but at the moment It is a temporary ban while we figure out what's going on at our borders.
Simply put, whether you like it or not, this is one of the promises Trump made during the campaign season.
If at the end of 120 days we have a stronger vetting process, not based on blanket bigotry, but rather on informed decisions about each person individually, then we can finally start to have an honest discussion about how many refugees we can or should let in.
On the extremes we now have people calling for totally open borders, which is national suicide, and we also have other people calling for zero immigration, which is the antithesis of what America stands for.
Another important piece of the order is the deference that's being given to religious minorities who are under persecution.
I find the anger against this quite confusing.
The left is supposed to be for minorities, but in this case, giving priority to Yazidis, Kurds, Christians and others who are being wiped out as we speak is somehow being flipped as if this is supposedly anti-Muslim.
The truth is that these religious minorities are the most vulnerable communities in the entire Middle East.
It doesn't matter if you're a believer or a non-believer to understand that protecting the most at risk is the right thing to do.
An interesting point to add here is that the Obama administration let in 12,000 Muslims from Syria in 2016, but only 100 Christian refugees.
I don't know the reasoning behind this policy, but where was the outrage when Obama left Christians behind if this current outrage is really about protecting minorities who are in harm's way?
The order also limits the amount of refugees to 50,000 per year, which is basically in line with where we've been at over the past 15 years or so.
For example, in 2003, 2006 and 2007 we admitted less than 50,000 refugees per year under George W. Bush.
Obama bumped that up a bit to 70,000 people in the last two years of his administration, but in the previous three years before that he was right around that 50,000 mark as well.
Without getting too lost in the numbers here, the point is that Trump's proposal isn't far off of previous administrations, especially if you remove the little bump under the last two years of Obama.
Of course you can argue that American action or inaction in Syria has led to many of these refugees in the first place.
So again, where was the outrage when we were dropping bombs, not just temporarily limiting refugees?
Of course the last few years also coincide with a jump in worldwide jihad, especially in countries which have taken in many refugees.
I think if you could ask the people of Germany, France and Belgium if they might rethink some of their immigration policies over the past few years, there would probably be a resounding yes.
These countries now have to deal with homegrown terror as well as the influx of refugees which has created a new set of problems both economically and culturally.
None of this is a reason not to let sensible amounts of properly vetted refugees in, but it does lend credence to a temporary pause while we figure out if our vetting system is effective and sensible.
The rollout of this order was no doubt absolutely chaotic and confusing, but I'm not sure if any real change to our system could be done without a certain amount of chaos and confusion, especially because of a media that thrives on emotion over fact.
Finally, there also seems to be some confusion as to whether people who currently reside in the United States with green cards from these 7 countries would be able to come back to the country after leaving.
At first it sounds like they wouldn't have been allowed to get back in, then it sounded like they could get back in, and now it sounds like it'll be done on a case by case basis.
For example, my friend and former guest Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, who is a refugee from Iraq who now lives in America and has devoted his life to fighting Islamism and for secularism, could possibly be locked out of the country if he was to go do a speaking gig in Canada with my friend and former guest Ali Rizvi, a Muslim reformer himself.
This portion of the order still seems to be in flux, which is evidence of an unprepared rollout.
Of course this is 2017 and unfortunately facts seem to take a backseat to fiction and hysteria at every turn.
So some protesters are protesting without really knowing what's going on at all.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer is crying and talking about a Muslim ban when he must know full well that that isn't what this is.
People are now either drinking more Starbucks or boycotting Starbucks because Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said he would hire 10,000 refugees.
Elon Musk, who publicly offered on Twitter to take people's concerns directly to Trump, is being attacked by people as if he's enabling a Nazi.
As I predicted a few weeks ago, misguided outrage is taking the place of real discussion.
So when politicians scream about a Muslim ban, which this is not, it feeds the fire to Trump to do whatever he wants because no matter what he does, he knows they are going to be outraged.
This is why the regressive left and the Trumpian right are a match made in hell for each other.
We have one side which refuses to debate Islamism and immigration honestly, and another side that will be all too happy to circumvent our intended legislative process with the stroke of a pen.
If you value liberty over authoritarianism, then neither one of these positions is tenable.
In an effort to make sense of some of the madness surrounding this executive order, I have a few interesting conversations planned for this week, and I also want to share two articles by people I truly respect, though they are often at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Below you can find links to an article Ben Shapiro wrote about the executive order, as well as a blog post by Sam Harris.
In addition to those sources, in case you missed it, I did a live stream with Faisal yesterday, who is directly affected by this order, and you can find a link to that below as well.
And finally, my guest this week is no stranger to controversy himself, and also someone who often finds himself in the crosshairs of people on both extremes.
Glenn Beck will be joining me in studio today to discuss refugees, Trumpism, the modern conservative movement, online media and more.
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