Republican front-runner Donald Trump asserts he has many Muslim friends. He probably should amend that statement to “had” instead of “has.”
It’s hard to imagine that any Muslim would be willing to break bread with this hater using bigotry, racism and the politics of fear as vote-getting mechanisms. I haven’t heard any of his so-called Muslim pals speaking up on his behalf.
As if his vitriol-laced statements and policies weren’t bad enough regarding Muslims, he has sunk to new lows. Rose Hamid, an American-Muslim 56-year-old flight attendant attending one of his campaign rallies wearing a T-shirt that read “I come in peace,” was booed by his following. She was asked whether she had a bomb, and forcibly escorted out. Her goal was “to let people know that Muslims were not that scary.”
Asked by a CNN host why she would put herself in that position to be around “those people,” she answered, “Because I don’t want to think of them as those people… I believe that people in all camps are decent people when you get to know them as was evidenced by those people around me who were very lovely people. But it when you get that hateful rhetoric going is what incites people.” She says she feels sorry for them.
Trump capitalized on the incident saying, “There is hatred against us that is unbelievable. It’s their hatred, it’s not our hatred.” Until fairly recently, Trump’s negative attitude toward Mexicans, African Americans and Muslims was seen as mere fodder for academic discussions and food for hysterical media headlines. This is America we’re talking about, after all, a country built on values and equal rights for all.
Surely, someone like Trump didn’t have a hope in hell of reaching the White House! But now we can’t be sure when a quarter of Democratic votes approve of his anti-Muslim ads according to the results of a questionnaire distributed by Mercury Analytics while almost 20 percent wrote that there’s a possibility they might cross-over to the other side.
A new Fox News poll suggests Trump would beat Hilary Clinton; others have the two rival candidates running neck-and-neck. Thankfully, the US presidential election is almost a year away and much can happen between now and then, but the idea of a President Trump in the Oval office can no longer be dismissed as fantastical. If the worse happens, America’s relationships with predominately Muslim countries will likely be in peril especially if he carries through his threat of barring all Muslims from entering the US and creating a database of American-Muslims. Certainly our world would be a far more dangerous place than it already is.
Muslim leaderships haven’t been particularly vocal in response to Trump’s anti-Islamic rhetoric, perhaps because they don’t want to be seen as interfering in America’s internal affairs or they may hold out hope that the Trump factor will end up as no more than a flash in the pan destined to be forgotten in the dustbin of history. I think this is a mistake. The Republican Party establishment, which would like nothing more than for Trump to disappear in a puff of smoke but whose hands are tied because he has threatened to run as an independent if he doesn’t receive the nomination, need waking up to the potential repercussions of their cowardice. The American people need to be led by responsible political parties, which put their country before their own partisan ambitions.
Kudos to the British people who signed a petition that has garnered almost 600,000 signatures calling for Trump to be banned from their country’s shores! Any petition signed by more than 100,000 is eligible to be debated and Jan. 18 is the day that a parliamentary debate will take place. It’s a good move but don’t hold your breath.
Even if British lawmakers were courageous enough to alienate a section of the US public by backing the petition’s sentiments, the final decision still rests with Number Ten. There is little to no chance that Prime Minister Cameron would risk losing the UK’s closest ally even though he has described Trump’s Muslim ban as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”
Trump’s relationship with Britain is already at breaking point after he told MSNBC that areas of London “were so radicalized that police are afraid for their lives.” London’s Mayor Boris Johnson called his claim “ridiculous” adding “The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.” With the specter of the parliamentary debate approaching, Trump has resorted to his usual bullyboy tactics, warning his $1.03 billion investments in Scotland were in the balance.
If Trump is permitted to use threats in order to call the shots when he has no official position, the harm he could do to countries and individuals he perceives as foes is unimaginable and could boomerang to do irreparable damage to America’s economy and international standing. This is why America’s allies including Muslim states should send a strong message to Washington now by blacklisting Trump and his companies. As long as there is silence and no tangible reactions, his winning streak will endure.
