People think Donald Trump is fulfilling a chilling prediction by a jihadi leader

Donald Trump banned people from entering the US from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.

The president’s decision was widely criticised by citizens, government officials and country leaders worldwide, with many questioning how effective the ban will be in keeping the US safe from terrorist attacks.

There are even calls to impeach the president.

Saudi Arabia was not on the drawn up list of countries, despite the fact that 19 terrorists who were involved in the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre 11 September 2011 were of Saudi origin.

A video filmed in Yemen, a year before al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki died, has resurfaced online for its apparent prophetic words.

In March 2010, al-Awlaki addressed American and European Muslims, warning them that eventually, the countries in which they reside, will become hostile towards them.

He said:

Muslims of the West, take heed and learn from the lessons of history: there are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.

Yesterday America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and Ku Klux Klan. and tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps.

Today, with the war between Muslims and the West escalating.

You cannot count on the message of solidarity you may get from a civic group or a political party, or the word of support you hear from a kind neighbour or a nice co-worker.

The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.

The last line has been taken by some ‘pro-Islamic State social media accounts’ as a prediction of Donald Trump’s immigration ban, which has been informally referred to by many as a ‘Muslim ban’.

One person posted a banner of the quote, along with a picture of Awlaki on a Telegram channel, with the caption:

When US President Donald Trump says ‘We don’t want them here’ and bans the Muslim immigrants from Muslim countries, there is one thing that comes to our mind.

This rhetoric however, is not a new one.

Middle East historian Pieter Van Ostaeyen told CBC News that discourse coming out of Isis propagates a particular theory based on the idea that the east and the west are, and will always be in conflict.

What they really want … is the clash of civilizations.

In fact, research has shown that Isis recruitment is constructed on the cultural isolation of Muslims living in western countries. One researcher on the topic of foreign fighters in Isis concludes:

The flow of foreign fighters to ISIS is driven not by economic or political conditions but rather by ideology and the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries.

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More: No national from the 7 countries Trump has banned immigration from has attacked the US in 40 years