The American Jewish Committee’s director of policy, Jason Isaacson, noted the timing of Trump’s statement, which called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United Statee”, coincident with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
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Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Monday called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, unleashing some of the most provocative and divisive remarks of his controversial presidential campaign.
Trump did not clarify if his proposal would affect both tourists and immigrants, and did not say either if it would target American Muslims now overseas.
“As a conservative who truly cares about religious liberty, Donald Trump’s bad idea and rhetoric send a shiver down my spine. You figure it out!”
“This is the kind of think that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about”, he said.
Trump’s comments at a rally on Monday in SC prompted criticism from Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, who said Trump was “unhinged”.
Protesters interrupted his speech at least three times, with a visibly frustrated Trump criticising what he described as poor security at the event. But his proposal was met with enthusiasm by many of his supporters, who showed their approval via social media as well as at his rally. “It should be disturbing not only to American Muslims, but it should be disturbing to all Americans that the leading Republican presidential candidate would issue essentially a fascist statement like this”.
A survey by the Pew Research Center in 2011 estimated there were 2.75 million Muslims in the United States, although members of the community put the number anywhere from six to 12 million.
In the late 1800s, Congress passed legislation broadly aimed at halting Chinese immigration.
– Leti Volpp, an expert on immigration law at the University of California at Berkeley.
“Excluding nearly a quarter of the world’s population from setting foot in the United States based exclusively upon their religious identity would never pass constitutional muster”, Volpp said.
Trump’s call comes one day after President Obama’s address from the Oval Office in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings that were carried out by an apparently self-radicalized married couple.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, holds a press conference at the same hour to denounce Trump’s comments.
“NUR JAZLAN MOHAMAD, Malaysian deputy home minister, said the proposal is not aligned with America’s image as tolerant and democratic, and could play into the Islamic State group’s hands by alienating Muslims who are already in the U.S”.
But his latest statement was particularly jarring, and it unleashed severe condemnation on Twitter, including from other Republicans running for president. This is exactly what ISIS wants from Americans: “to turn against each other”.
SAM BAHOUR, a Palestinian-American business consultant who moved from Youngstown, Ohio, to Ramallah, West Bank, in the 1990s, called the comments “disgraceful” and “absurd”. John McCain’s prisoner-of-war experience; and told what was widely perceived as a menstruation joke about a female TV personality.
But will it hurt his campaign?
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Hopefully Trump, who prides himself on his negotiating talent, will push “a hugely radical idea” and then settle “for what the country will allow him to do”, Newman said.
