On Tuesday we noted that GOP Presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz is prepared to draft [6] a refugee rejection bill in light of what happened in Paris last Friday.
Obama’s plan to bring 10,000 Syrian asylum seekers into the US is “nothing short of lunacy” Cruz contends. He went on to say that "there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.” The President fired back with this: “That's not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”
While that sounds good in principle, near daily videos from Islamic State’s world class propaganda arm Furat Media have inflamed religious tensions in the West as militants prosthelytize and rant about destroying “crusaders” in full 1080p before committing atrocities so heinous on camera that it’s almost difficult to believe the footage is real.
All of this is done in the name of Islam, much to the chagrin of Muslims who don’t spend their days burning people alive and running people over with tanks, but for many Westerners, twenty thousand or so bad apples does indeed spoil the whole bunch and the massacre in Paris pretty much sealed the deal for many conservative Americans and GOP lawmakers when it comes to allowing Syrian refugees into the country.
As you might imagine given his stance on immigration, Donald Trump has some strong views on Islam in America and national security. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Yahoo [7].
Trump’s take on the Paris attacks fits with the rest of his doctrine. He’s promised to “bomb the shit out of” the jihadist group ISIS, which is based in Syria and has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Trump has also vowed to take an aggressive approach with Muslims here in the United States and suggested there should be a national effort to monitor mosques. He has spoken wistfully of the New York City Police Department’s mosque surveillance program, which was abandoned last year after generating substantial controversy.
Trump told Yahoo the architect of that program, former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, is someone he might think about for a position in a Trump presidential administration.
“Ray’s a great guy,” Trump said. “Ray did a fab job as commissioner and, sure, Ray would be somebody I’d certainly consider.”
After Paris, Trump said “security is going to rule” in the United States, in order to take on what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism.” America has currently agreed to take in 10,000 refugees from the ISIS stronghold in Syria. However, if he is elected, Trump said he would deport any Syrian refugees allowed to enter this country under President Obama.
“They’re going to be gone. They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not,” Trump said of the refugees. “But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance. You look at the migration, it’s young, strong men. We cannot take a chance that the people coming over here are going to be ISIS-affiliated.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “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.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.
To be fair to The Donald, he was clearly being baited here, but that said, the above seems to indicate that a Trump administration would consider requiring Muslim Americans to carry ID cards identifying them as Muslims.
Obviously, that will conjure up some rather uncomfortable images from Europe's past.
Is Trump right? We'll leave it to readers to discuss.
