The United Arab Emirates claims Donald Trump’s migration ban is not anti-Islamic after pointing out that the majority of Muslims are still free to travel to the US.
Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdallah bin Zayed al-Nahyan said the controversial measure, affecting seven mainly Muslim countries, is not directed at any religion.
Trump’s executive order on Friday singled out citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to prevent ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ from entering the United States.
The Sheikh, whose country like neighbouring Saudi Arabia is a close ally of Washington, said it was ‘wrong to say’ that the decision by the new US administration was ‘directed against a particular religion’.
‘The United States has made… a sovereign decision,’ he said at a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, pointing out that it was ‘provisional’ and did not apply to ‘the large majority’ of the world’s Muslims.
In his defence of the ban which has stirred widespread protests across the globe, Sheikh Abdullah also said that some of the countries on the blacklist had ‘structural challenges’ on the security front that they still had to overcome.
Hot on the heels of the travel ban, Trump called Saudi King Salman and UAE strongman Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince.
Trump agreed with both on cooperation to fight ‘radical Islamic terrorism’, the White House said.
He also agreed with the Saudi monarch to ‘rigorously’ enforce the nuclear agreement with Riyadh’s arch-foe Iran, an agreement that Trump had opposed
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has reportedly lashed out at the ban describing Trump and his administration as newcomers who don’t understand politics, saying, ‘A man had been living in another world and now has entered the world of politics.’
Rouhani also said that Trump would end up harming not only his own nation but other countries as well and called the American administration dishonest for claiming to be on the side of the Iranian people, but then banning them.
The ban has exempted Muslim-majority nations associated with major attacks in the West.
Out of the 19 hijackers of planes used in the September 11, 2001 attacks, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, also the birthplace of Al-Qaeda founder and attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The other four included the Egyptian plot leader, two Emiratis and a Lebanese.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Arab nations are also home to scores of jihadists who have joined Al-Qaeda and its rival ISIS, both of which have been behind deadly attacks in Europe.
But the kingdom, cradle of the austere Sunni doctrine of Wahhabism, has traditionally been a strategic ally of Washington.