News Right Now: Self-Same

After a protracted vote count and allegations of electoral fraud from Trump and the Republican Party, Joe Biden has achieved the 270 electoral votes to secure the position of president elect.

However, far from the landslide victory the Democrats hoped for, this election has revealed the deep and significant divide in the country.

Biden may have achieved 50.6% of the votes but Trump still took a vast 47.7% of the total. Meaning that about 70 million Americans voted for Trump - and although many of the 74 million votes cast for Biden were really votes against Trump’s divisive and offensive behavior - it shows that although Trump lost the election he is actually still the more popular of the two.

This, along with the strength of the Republican Party in Congress, will mean that it will be difficult for Biden to make any radical reversals.

The deep divide exposed by the elections, was indicative of the opposing ideas between the two parties that became more entrenched in the last four years given Trump’s provocative attitudes.

Trump’s poor leadership regarding the response to the Covid pandemic was to question the reliability of the data around the incidence and prevalence of the disease. Also he laid blame for the disease squarely at the feet of the Chinese, allowing for wild conspiracy theories about all aspects of the cause, treatment and defence of the pandemic to develop, in particular among his supporters.

Internationally, Trump succeeded with weak and subservient rulers, but his greatest failure was to stand up alone to China. He dismantled Obama’s efforts to build a regional Trans Pacific Partnership to contain China - and instead opened a costly trade war with China.. with belligerent rhetoric and threats - that Republicans viewed as standing up for freedom, but Democrats viewed as misguided.

America’s image had gone from bad to worse, since the election of Trump, and even in the west, those reporting on the US elections have commented that the allegations of electoral fraud and Trump’s own insistence to sue his way to reelection - mean that America will never again be taken seriously in preaching free and fair elections to the rest of the world.
The era of hyper-polarization, which was obvious from the opposition to the black lives matter movement... the irremediably racist rhetoric which included the anti Muslim ban, the accelerated economic inequality and an attitude overly ambivalent to poverty, violence, police brutality and guns - together resulted in Americans turning against each other.
Bringing into question American values and freedoms, and highlighting the inherent contradictions of a society built on secular liberalism.

Nothing about the US goes unnoticed, so the inconsistencies between the reality and rhetoric played out in recent years have led to its declining influence globally. It looks as if this dysfunctional nation is suffering a full-scale breakdown, which many observers believe will affect its ability to protect and project its power abroad.

Back in America, the election results saw jubilations from many Muslims who feared another term of Trump and his polarizing racist views.

Although some polls suggested 35% of American Muslims supported Trump for his ‘conservatism’, and policies, which prioritized US nationals for highly skilled jobs - the CAIR poll, found that 71% said they back Biden.

However Biden, Obama and the Democrats overall have duped the Muslims in America into thinking that their interests as a community will be respected. Outside the individual ethics that American Muslims may live by, the Democrats’ agenda is just as hawkish and aggressive as the Republicans were in the Muslim world.

The Obama administration orchestrated policies that harmed the Muslims in Syria and Iraq by supporting Assad’s tyranny and blood lust under the guise of conferences and trilateral diplomacy with Russia, Iran and Turkey. Likewise Obama derailed the revolutions and many of the sincere players, complicating the work on the ground for true peace under Islam to prevail. It is widely accepted that drone attacks in Afghanistan and Yemen increased under Obama too.

At home the Democrats’ liberal policies are likely to infringe the Muslim communities sensibilities as liberalism gives full support to LGBTQ and feminist rights – forcing American Muslims to either take an ideological stand to protect Islam from reform, or bury their heads in the sand.

O Muslims.. for how long will we be duped by the smiling faces and eloquent words of politicians who clearly stand for the same vices and greed we have witnessed from Trump, Bush and the neocons we all suffered.

Its time to understand that a government’s policies are not to do with the presumed good character of a man, but rather the secular, liberal framework of Capitalism that this nation believes in upholding to the highest degree –and which it will strike against anything that challenges its right and ability to do so.

We carry an alternative system that humanity is so desperately in need of, the Khilafah - a superior ideology based on the Oneness of Allah swt - which will recalibrate the excesses of Capitalism and bring balance to societies consumed by hate, greed and all manner of individualism and division.

Our Prophet Muhammed (saw) said...

«وَالَّذِي نَفْسِي بِيَدِهِ، لَتَأْمُرُنَّ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَلَتَنْهَوُنَّ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ، أَوْ لَيُوشِكَنَّ اللَّهُ أَنْ يَبْعَثَ عَلَيْكُمْ عِقَابًا مِنْهُ، ثُمَّ تَدْعُونَهُ فَلا يَسْتَجِيبُ لَكُمْ»

“By the One in Whose hands my soul rests, you have to enjoin the ma’roof and forbid the munkar, otherwise Allah will be about to send upon you a punishment from Him, then you would pray to Him but He would not answer you.”
[Reported by Ahmad and Tirmidhi]

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