Trump’s Comments On Muslims Are Dangerous

By Saina Behnejad on November 29, 2015

We’ve all seen the deplorable language directed at Muslim Americans and Syrian refugees in the last few weeks. Unsurprisingly, many of the remarks have come from Republican presidential candidates. One of the most prominent of those candidates is the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump. His outlandish statements, often laced with sexism, racism and many other isms, get national attention.

I frequently have trouble taking anything he has to say seriously. Yes, I’m aware he’s leading in the polls. But most of what he says has no validity, and I’m usually optimistic that the majority of Americans can see that. I keep up with his campaign for some comic relief and mild irritation. But his recent comments on Muslim Americans are crossing the line from offensive, to dangerous.

In an interview with Yahoo News, Trump put forward his ideas on preventing a terrorist attack in the US. “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before.” he said. “And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

The reporter, Hunter Walker, asked if the level of surveillance Trump was advocating might require registering Muslims in a database, or in Walker’s words, “giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion.” Trump wouldn’t rule the idea out, saying, “We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely.” He went further, “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

As soon as he sensed backlash for those remarks, in his usual fashion, Trump completely denied he made them, instead pointing the finger at the reporter. But then, seeing the positive reaction from his very conservative base, he flip-flopped again. He told NBC News “I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.” He was asked whether Muslims would be legally obligated to sign into the database, and Trump responded, “They have to be — they have to be.” When he was asked to explain the difference between requiring Muslims to enter their information into a database and making Jewish people register in Nazi Germany, he responded, “You tell me.”

Trump confirming he would force Muslim Americans to sign in on a database to NBC reporter.

He hasn’t stopped there. Last weekend, Trump claimed to have seen video of crowds of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey, Jersey City after the September 11th attacks. This has been widely disputed by fact checkers. In a statement, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop criticized Trump for his remarks. “Trump is plain wrong, and he is shamefully politicizing an emotionally charged issue,” said Fulop. “No one in Jersey City cheered on September 11th. We were actually among the first to provide responders to help in lower Manhattan.”

This kind of rhetoric, denounced by the majority of presidential candidates, is shocking. In a time when Muslims face increasing Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, and many consider the political climate to be worse than after September 11th, these kinds of statements display a willful disregard for truth, and the safety of Muslims. He should know better. The solution to terrorism does not lie in Nazi tactics.

A positive outcome from his unfortunate remarks is different organizations are standing by Muslims Americans and condemning Trump. “Singling out any ethnic or faith group to register with the government is morally repugnant, not to mention unconstitutional,” American Jewish Commitee executive director David Harris said. “What Mr. Trump proposes, in this case targeting all Muslims, is a horror movie that we Jews are quite familiar with.”

Of course, Trump is not the only Republican candidate to have sparked controversy. Ben Carson compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs”. Ted Cruz put forward the idea of only allowing Christian refugees in from Syria, although he wasn’t able to say how he would determine their religion. Would he baptize them? Would he make them recite the Bible?

Individual Muslims have fired back at Trump.  Marwa Balkar, 22, from Southern California, posted an open letter to Trump last week. Since then it has got more than half a million likes on Facebook, including from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Balkar posted a picture of herself wearing a peace symbol on her shirt. Her letter said, “I heard you wanted us to start wearing ID badges, so I decided to choose one for myself. I am not easily identifiable as a #Muslim just by looking at me, so my new badge will let me display proudly who I am. I chose the peace sign because it represents my #Islam,” she wrote.

Marwa Balkar posted this picture of herself wearing a peace symbol. She wrote an open letter to Trump, “I heard you wanted us to start wearing ID badges, so I decided to choose one for myself.”

“I heard you want to track us as well. Great! You can come with me on my Cancer Awareness walks at the local middle school, or you can follow me to work where it’s my job to create happiness. You can also see how my local mosque makes PB&J sandwiches for the homeless and hosts interfaith dinners where everyone is welcome.”

U.S. veteran Marine Sgt. Tayyib Rashid tweeted Trump a photo of his military identification card with the message: “Hey @realDonald Trump, I’m an American and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?” His post went viral with nearly 35,000 retweets and prompted a huge follow-on social media posts under the hashtag #MuslimID from other U.S. troops, police officers, lawyers, medical professionals and students who identify as Muslim.

Singling out a demographic due to their supposed shared religion with a minority of terrorists will not prevent terrorism, it will fuel it. Trump is not a viable candidate for the presidency, he’s made that plain. His comments are not only harmful; they are threatening 2.5 million people.

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