RUTHFULLY YOURS

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has never had it this bad, and he wants you to know that it is all the fault of one Donald J. Trump, lately of Washington, D.C. You may find it hard to believe that a President of the United States – any President of the United States – could so haunt the nightmares of the chief executive of a large and venerable city in another country, but that’s just because even after these past four years, you still haven’t fully grasped just how Bad this Orange Man really is. But you may be able to get a note excusing you from the next Truth and Reconciliation Commission meeting if you take some time now to understand how Sadiq Khan has suffered.

The UK’s LBC revealed Monday that “London Mayor Sadiq Khan has told LBC he was singled out by the now-outgoing US President Donald Trump ‘for no other reason’ than being Muslim.” How had the sinister Trump singled out Khan, you ask? Did he spy upon him? Did he try to frame him for crimes that would get him impeached and removed from office? No, none of that. Khan complained that Trump had put him under an “astonishingly ugly spotlight.”

This spotlight just added to Khan’s troubles: despite being Mayor of London and one of the most prominent politicians in Britain, he still suffered for his religious faith. “Being a Muslim ain’t easy, it isn’t easy,” Khan lamented, adding “it’s never been harder to be a Muslim than the last four years.”

Never, in 1,400 years of Islam! Wow! Not when the Muslims were expelled from Spain! Not when the State of Israel was founded, which supporters of the Palestinian jihad will tell you was the worst day in human history! No, for Khan it has never been worse than it is now, not because of China’s persecution of the Uighurs, but because of the evil Mr. Trump. For now, Khan said, the world had “for the first time the leader of the free world, a mainstream politician perpetuating a view that Islam and the West are incompatible.”

Oh, there were plenty of politicians saying that during the halcyon days of the old Ottoman Empire, and right up until the Left overwhelmed American academia in the 1960s, but it is unlikely that either Khan or his Leftist supporters have much of a historical memory. Trump, Khan claimed, had perpetuated a view that “all of us must be bad, or must be terrorist because of the actions of a very small minority.”

“Let’s be frank,” he concluded. “The reason I was singled out was not because of any other reason,” he said, “than my faith.” And now Muslims worldwide are “carrying an additional weight,” all because of Trump.

As is so very characteristic of Islamic supremacists the world over, Khan started this feud, and is now playing the victim and claiming that Trump is motivated by “Islamophobia.”

The Trump/Khan conflict began in January 2017, when Khan attacked Trump’s travel ban on several countries that could not or would not provide adequate information about the people wishing to enter. Khan said: “I am quite clear, this ban is cruel, this ban is shameful, while this ban is in place we should not be rolling out the red carpet for President Trump.” The following month, Khan declared: “President Trump can’t silence me….We stand in solidarity with all those who are discriminated against because of their nationality, their faith or their background.”

After a jihad massacre in London in June 2017, Trump tweeted: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack, and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”

Two years later, in June 2019, Trump tweeted: “@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me.”

So it looks as if Trump has criticized Khan for being blasé after a jihad massacre, for being personally unkind to him, and for neglecting London’s skyrocketing crime rate.

What in that is singling Khan out for being a Muslim? Nothing, of course. The same charges can be made against others, and Trump has made them; he has many times criticized New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is not a Muslim, for being soft on crime.

So on what does Khan base his claim that Trump only criticized him because he is a Muslim? Nothing except the always-salient fact that it will play well with his Leftist base – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.