Source: The Washington Post
At a rally in southwest Virginia on Monday, Republican front-runner Donald Trump again told an apocryphal story about a general killing Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. In Tennessee on Saturday, he promised to bar Syrians from the country “until we find out what the hell is going on.” In Oklahoma City the night before, he launched into a passionate defense of waterboarding after a protester flashed a sign reading “Islamophobia is not the answer.”
And every time, the crowd roared with deafening cheers.
Along with his attacks on illegal immigrants, Trump’s willingness to go further than any of his GOP rivals in casting suspicions on Muslims has horrified many Republican establishment figures and has attracted widespread condemnation from both parties.
But for many Trump supporters, the GOP front-runner’s harsh rhetoric on Muslims is one of the keys to his appeal, especially among evangelicals who feel that Christians are under siege and hampered by political correctness. Those feelings are probably a big part of the reason Trump is leading most of the 11 primary contests being held Tuesday, especially those in the South.
“Mr. Trump is not against Muslims. . . . Not all Muslims are bad, but ISIS, they are Muslims, so I have to think we have to group them together now,” said Charlie Shane, 21, a junior at Texas Tech University who decided to vote for Trump when he promised to bomb the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.“He’s trying to keep Americans safe. Our lives are more important than theirs, and that’s just the reality.”Trump has not only promised to “bomb the s— out of ISIS” — he would also kill the loved ones of suspected jihadists. He would bring back waterboarding — which is forbidden by U.S. and international law but which Trump considers “minimal, minimal, minimal torture” — and would do “much worse” to suspected terrorists. He would temporarily ban most foreign Muslims from entering the country and would heavily surveil and possibly close some U.S. mosques.
Categories: America, Islamophobia, The Muslim Times, US Politics, USA