It seems pretty ineffective to ban people from 7 nations, and ignore the nations where the vast majority of Muslims actually live and do business.
Do people really think Somalia is some kind of Isamic power-player versus Saudi Arabia or the Emirates?
These countries were not picked randomly because they "Muslim". There is a long standing animosity against them. A retired US general in 2007 said: “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran...”[1].
And now which countries are banned: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen... that's 6 out of the 7 named above.
Now please do not read this as a defence of the executive order. Whatever its intentions, it was poorly implemented and applied with seemingly no thought to the political fallout or the disruption to peoples' lives. Green card holders in America deserve better than no-notice before being detained at the borders.
However, it seems to me that every one of the countries named is currently embroiled in a civil war or has strong non-governmental forces within its borders----that is the commonality that they share.
When '(surprise!)' is written in brackets like that, or otherwise thrown in as an interjection, it is almost always intended sarcastically. This is a very common written English idiom (at least online).
