Donald Trump’s call for Muslim ban is met with outrage
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally Dec. 5 in Davenport, Iowa.
Donald Trump’s call for all Muslims to be barred from entering the United States for an indefinite period of time met with outrage from local Muslim activists.
Responding to the San Bernardino terrorist attack that killed 14 people, Trump on Monday said that “until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”
Oussama Jammal, secretary general of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, said American Muslims are “completely outraged” by Trump’s comments.
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“They defy values on which America was founded,” he said. “Mr. Trump doesn’t realize how much the Muslim community works to counter violence.”
Jammal called the Muslim community hardworking and instrumental to American society, and stressed that many Muslims are doctors, professors and engineers.
“It’s unfortunate that a candidate for president of the United States would have such views,” he said. “That’s not what America wants.”
Ranea Al-Tikriti, a fourth-year nutrition and food sciences student at Cal State San Bernardino, and the president of the university’s Muslim Student Assn., responded incredulously to Trump’s proposal.
“I don’t know, I mean, oh God, Donald Trump, I don’t know what to do with him,” she said. “I don’t think that anybody should be forbidden from entering” the country without cause.
She said she doesn’t take Trump seriously but also is concerned because he is now the Republican frontrunner.
Asked for reaction to Trump’s comments about Muslims, Felisa Cardona, a spokeswoman for San Bernardino County told the Los Angeles Times that “the politics of all of this is not really relevant right now.”
“Right now our focus is on our employees and the trauma they have experienced, and making sure we do all we can for them as they come back to work,” Cardona said.
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