{"id":15983,"date":"2017-05-28T19:13:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T19:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=15983"},"modified":"2017-05-30T19:18:23","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T19:18:23","slug":"arrias-on-politics-trump-reformation-and-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/arrias-on-politics-trump-reformation-and-the-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrias on Politics: Trump, Reformation and the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

The historian Will Durant commented that the Reformation
\n\u201c\u2026(left) the Church purified\u2026 into an organization politically weaker but morally stronger than before.\u201d In short, the Reformation didn\u2019t change what the Church really believed, but it did serve to change how those in the Church thought about political power
\nand the various nations-states of Europe, and began the process of returning the Church to its origins, more apart from any state than part of one, seeking to help believers to reach an eternal reward vice a temporal one.<\/p>\n

In a similar light, on January 1, 2015, Egyptian President
\nSisi gave a speech calling for the end to violence and extremism in the name of Islam, calling not for a change in Islam \u2013 the religion, but a change in \u201cthe thinking we hold most sacred,\u201d referencing the Koran. In short, Sisi was calling for Muslims to change
\ntheir thinking about how they view Islam and its relationship to political power.<\/p>\n

The point was apparently not lost on President Trump.<\/p>\n

President Trump has completed his first international
\ntrip as president, and there were a number of newsworthy stories. But they all paled in relation to one event: his speech to the Arab \u2013 American summit (21 May). The speech marks a turning point in how the US, and hopefully the West, addresses Islamic fanaticism
\nand Islamic terror.<\/p>\n

Speaking directly to the point of Islamic terrorism,
\nMr. Trump stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can be no coexistence
\nwith this violence. There can be no tolerating it, no accepting it, no excusing it, and no ignoring it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then called on the Arab
\nnations:<\/p>\n

\u201cMuslim
\nnations must be willing to take on the burden, if we are going to defeat terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The implication is clear: Islamic
\nterror will continue \u2013 or end \u2013 based on how the Muslim nations think about Islamic terror and it\u2019s political nature; they can tolerate it, or they can attack it. As President Sisi said, it begins with changing how they think.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, a few days later
\na fanatical Islamic terrorist conducted an attack in Manchester, England that left 22 dead and 116 injured, 23 critically. This was followed by an attack in Egypt that left 29 dead and at least 20 injured. These attacks serve to illustrate the threat remains,
\nand it remains chillingly vicious; in the first case attacking people at a concert, in the second a bus filled with people headed to a monastery to pray.<\/p>\n

The attacks also serve to underline
\nwhat Mr. Trump pointed out, the solution cannot be provided from the outside; the US cannot eliminate the problem of Islamic terrorists; the solution must come from the Islamic nations. The US can, and will, help; but the Islamic nations must provide the answer.<\/p>\n

It seems strange that, given
\nthat quite obvious reality, there\u2019s resistance \u2013 both in Europe and in the US \u2013 to the issue of controlling the flow of people out of the Middle East and into Europe and the US. The threat posed to the US and Europe isn\u2019t from the nations of the Middle East
\n(Iran being the obvious exception), but rather, the threat is to be found hiding amongst the immigrants from the region. Any attempt to contain violence such as what occurred in Manchester (or Egypt) must begin, at least in part, with controlling the movement
\nof Islamic fanatics, particularly into the US (and Europe). Yet, political elites in the US (and Europe), and at least some in the US courts, suggest that the President doesn\u2019t have the authority to do what the Constitution explicitly directs him to do \u2013 protect
\nthe nation.<\/p>\n

The issue in the US courts will grind forward, and
\neventually end up in front of the Supreme Court, where, hopefully, some Constitutional clarity will be found. What will happen in Europe remains to be seen, but it\u2019s hard to be sanguine about Europe\u2019s immediate future.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, if Mr. Trump succeeds in nothing else
\nin the next 4 (or 8 years), but succeeds in supporting a movement towards a de facto reformation of Islam, his presidency will go down in history as a seminal period for America and the world.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2017 Arrias
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The historian Will Durant commented that the Reformation \u201c\u2026(left) the Church purified\u2026 into an organization politically weaker but morally stronger than before.\u201d In short, the Reformation didn\u2019t change what the Church really believed, but it did serve to change how those in the Church thought about political power and the various nations-states of Europe, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arrian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15984,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15983\/revisions\/15984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}