Trump’s Caging of Migrant Children Exemplifies the Inhumane Unconscionable Nature of America’s Nationalistic Democratic System

Press Release

Under the American President’s vile ‘zero-tolerance’ immigration policy, around 2000 children, some as young as 4 or 5, of those classified as ‘illegal immigrants’, have been forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border over the past six weeks alone. They have been placed in wire mesh cages in detention centres, whose conditions have been described as ‘prison-like’. One of these immigrant centres in Texas has been nick named La Perrera, “The dog kennel”, where children are sleeping on the floor on thin mattresses with foil sheets as blankets. Audio has been obtained of traumatized children wailing in distress, crying out for their parents. Authorities have announced plans to build tent cities that will hold hundreds more children in the Texas desert where temperatures regularly reach 40 degrees Celsius.

While there has been an outpouring of anger and condemnation from US politicians, western media and even former first ladies against Trump’s barbaric treatment of child migrants, they have conveniently ignored the fact that it is the callous nationalistic US Democratic system that allowed the anti-immigration Flores Settlement decree to be previously passed by Congress that permits the authorities to legally separate children from their parents in this horrendous way. This ‘unconscionable’ policy is therefore not simply the product of a heartless President. It is one of the rotten fruits of the ‘unconscionable’ US democratic system that lays opens the door to such vile policies being enacted and sanctioned by law, based on the sickening nationalistic prejudices of those who govern. What further proof is needed to demonstrate the utter inhumanity, absurdity and outright racism of nationalism and the nation state political model, that vilifies, dehumanizes, criminalizes, and traumatizes the children of those who are simply seeking a better economic life for themselves and their families, but happened to be born in a different land? Trump had no qualms about describing immigrants as those who bring “death and destruction” to the country and as “thieves and murderers”, knowing that he would face no judicial repercussions for his sick, inflammatory, racist remarks. The very fact that a state that has the strongest economy in the world and a huge land mass, refuses entry to those from a neighbouring land, due to viewing them as an economic burden, speaks volumes about the stone-hearted, selfish nature of the materialistic capitalist system and its nation state politics which has failed humanity. We have also witnessed similarly brutal and heartless anti-immigration stances adopted by the capitalist nation states of Europe, Australia and the Muslim world – where the most desperate people fleeing persecution and slaughter have been denied refuge, have been treated in the most humiliating manner and pushed back to die into war zones or abandoned to drown at sea, simply because they are from a different nationality to the land in which they seek sanctuary.

In contrast to the US nationalistic democratic system that has shown the world that it is the beacon of inhumanity, the Khilafah (Caliphate) based upon the method of the Prophethood rejects the concept of inhumane nationalistic borders as well as nationalism or racism of any form. Rather, it will invite those from other lands to come and live under its rule so that they can taste first-hand the justice and prosperity of the System of Allah (swt). This is why the Khilafah of the past provided sanctuary to more than 150,000 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution from the Christians during the Spanish Inquisition and enabled them to flourish under its Islamic rule. The Khalifah at the time, Sultan Bayezid II also sent out edicts throughout the state that the refugees were to be welcomed. In his proclamation, the Sultan told the Jews that it was Allah’s Command to take care of them, to see that they had food to eat and to take them under his protection. All this exemplifies the difference between a system whose aim is to lift mankind from oppression, as opposed to a system whose defining quality is to impose it upon humanity!

﴾إِنَّ اللّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاء ذِي الْقُرْبَى وَيَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاء وَالْمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ﴿

“Indeed Allah orders justice and the doing of good (to others) and the giving to the kindred, and He forbids indecency and evil and rebellion. He admonishes you that you may be mindful.”[16: 90]

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz

Director of the Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir