Tasteful as always, Donald Trump—the current national leader among the Republican candidates—described measures he was prepared to take to thwart Muslim American freedoms after the recent attacks in Paris by the Islamic State (IS, ISIS or ISIL).
“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 stated in response to a question posed by Yahoo News! concerning whether or not Trump’s advocacy for increased surveillance would include warrant-less searches of Muslim Americans. He went on to add, “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.”
His advocacies sound eerily familiar to some of the more extreme sections of the Patriotic Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some of these extreme sections, however, were ruled unconstitutional because they permitted the government to “conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.” That does indeed sound a lot like the rhetoric Trump is perpetuating in his latest interview.
Mr. Trump further exacerbated his dangerous plea for Muslim identification after he reportedly said that he would not rule out, “Registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion,” according to Yahoo! News. The poignancy of his comments did not relent there, though, as he built on his former statement adding, “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Donald Trump is attempting to instill fear within the American public by extending the notion that there are bad people hiding right under our noses that need to be uncovered at all costs.
Fear-mongering plainly on the basis of someone’s religion is dangerous and cause for concern and backlash. Reminiscent of Dr. Ben Carson’s statements regarding his belief that a Muslim should not be able to become president, Mr. Trump is falling victim to falsely characterizing an entire population with a single attribute: extremism.
Following the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, most people seem to agree that we must go on the offensive in an attempt to combat the Islamic State and prevent future terrorist attacks. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have advocated for increased intervention, which I believe is warranted.
The problem with Trump’s comments comes not in the fact that they advocate for an attack on Islamic extremism. Rather, he unjustly paints all American Muslims with a single brush when in reality, only a fraction of Muslims are extremists, especially American Muslims.
Calling for mandated identification on the basis of one’s religion stands antithetically to all notions of American liberty. It is counterfactual to religious freedom and, moreover, it is bigotry.
