Denny Nguyen

RELS 2400
Media Review
1. On November 23rd, tragedy struck as there was a terrorist attack in Paris that killed at
least 129 people. The group that attacked Paris was ISIS, gunmen got out of a Volkswagen Polo
outside of the Bataclan concert hall and fired mercilessly into the crowd inside. ISIS later
released a video and the organization said that they will "Strike America in its own stronghold in
Washington". Donald Trump who is running for president, suggested that there is a ban on
allowing Muslims entering the United States until things have settled down and countries
representatives have things figured out. This may cause the debate of whether or not there
should be a religious test to enter America. Although Trump received a lot of criticism and heat
from the media, he also got praise from many of his supporters. Previously to this suggestion, he
suggested that he would strongly consider that shutting down religious mosques in America after
the terror attacks occurred in Paris. During an interview on MSNBC, Trump said "Some of the
absolute hatred is coming from these areas...The hatred is incredible. It's embedded. The hatred
is beyond belief. The hatred is greater than anybody understands."
2. The authors do not lean on one side or another, they just state facts that have occurred
in the news, but the show the positives and the negatives from both sides. They did not twist his
words, they made it clear that Trump's intentions are supposed to be beneficial for the country,
that he did not mean to discriminate the Muslim community as a whole, but it was because he
wanted to minimize the risk of a terrorist attack in America. The ban would not apply to Muslims
currently living in the US, but it would apply for Muslims looking to immigrate to America and
even Muslims hoping to visit as tourists. They let the reader know that in recent interviews
earlier this month that he thinks Muslims are wonderful people and that he has Muslim friends,
but turns around and says there is also a large amount of Muslims living in America right now
have "tremendous animosity" .In the CNN article "Ban all Muslim travel to the U.S.", the author
includes the responses held from the political stand point. This included letting the reader know
that Obama was opposed to Trump's proposition, and how both Republicans and Democrats
didn't like his idea and criticized him.
3. Although I do not agree with everything that Donald Trump has suggested we do as a
country, but I understand where he is coming from and why he came up with the conclusion. The
country is so diverse culturally and religiously, we have came a long way to get to how we are
now, and I hate to see that most of the prejudice is aimed at the Muslim community that live here
and have nothing to do with what extremist terrorist groups have done. Many times Muslims are
generally stereotyped for being "terrorist", I hear it personally all the time. I think it's very sad
that many of them come to America to get away from some of the horrors they might of
encountered back in their home country, but then even in America they are judged for things they

personally had nothing to do with. What Trump wants to accomplish is to keep American's safe
by not allowing more chances of those with bad intentions coming into the country, but for that
to happen I think it is impossible for him to do without offending a group of people.
4. This topic has to do with many things we have covered throughout the course. What
came to my mind first was pluralism. Previous questions we have been asked were if pluralism
was possible in the country. I believe America is a pluralistic country, even though there is quite
often discrimination against those whole follow the Islam. In class we discussed that
discrimination is often caused by people not having a strong understanding of one another, and
that can lead to drawing early conclusions and fear. This goes against the grain when saying that
pluralism exists in America, so I think it would be better to say that we live in a pluralistic
country with altercations and flaws that will be hopefully fixed in the future. Many people from
immigrant countries come to America because of the privileges citizens have here that they
might not have. But going back to the topic of what Trump was insisting, this opportunity
wouldn't be available to Muslims and Muslims only.