I think he is right to talk about Islam in the singular (see "Stereotypes" here). I think he is right that Islam, in the mantra employed by Public Occurrences, "as it is practiced and preached today," in much of the Islamic world, but not in America, hates America. I have been blasting this trumpet for fifteen years to no effect.
It is on this issue, it is on this issue that the consensus of Republican and Democratic elites is vulnerable to Trump. It was George W. Bush who instantly said after 9/11 that we were not at war with Islam. In fact Bush went to a mosque in Baltimore right after 9/11 and said "Islam is Peace." Bush was wrong about both.
President Obama and his administration will not even use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam." There's extremism generally and singularly, Presbyterian and Mormon and Muslim, but not "Islamic extremism." The scandal of Benghazi, to me, is not whether there was inadequate protection for Ambassador Chris Stevens but rather the Obama/Clinton State Department's immediate contention that it was "Innocence of Muslims" that was the cause of the violent protests throughout the Muslim world on that day and in the days that followed.
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday in an interview from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. “There’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
"...there is tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred for the United States."
Cooper asked if there was a war between the West and radical Islam or Islam itself.
"It's radical but it's very hard to define," Trump said. "It's very hard to separate, because you don't know who's who."
It is hard. The Brothers Tsnarnaev ("We Muslims are all one body.")
The brash billionaire pointed to the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists as proof of the difficulty.
"These two young people that got married, she supposedly radicalized him,” Trump said. “The bottom line is they killed 14 people that gave them baby showers. I mean they were friends of theirs, so they walked in then they killed them. There’s an unbelievable hatred. You look at Paris, 138 people killed, many, many people going to die in the hospital, mortally wounded, horribly wounded, um, horribly wounded. And they walk into a room and boom, boom, boom. There’s, there’s a sickness going on that’s unbelievable.”
Trump's plan to halt Muslim immigration: I think that is constitutional. No one has the right to immigrate to the U.S. But I don't know for sure if banning a specific religious group from immigrating is constitutional.
If halting Muslim immigration is constitutional is it wise? Trump repeats here what he said previously, that it is a temporary ban "until we figure out" what is going on with Muslim attitudes. I don't know what he means there. There is nothing to figure out in my opinion, nor in Trump's seemingly. They "hate us," which I believe is fair stereotype. If Trump means we have to be discriminating in individual cases because it is hard to tell "who's who" in individual cases, absolutely.
The Obamas say to all of this: It justifies and encourages IS' and others violence and it threatens the existing Muslim community in America. On the first point, we are at war with IS, we are at war with a not precisely defined LARGE portion of Islamia, the Obamas and Bushes won't say that but we are, the Islamic groups say they're at war with us!, and we need to prosecute this as a war. "Bomb the shit out of IS," absolutely.
On the second point:
The spokesman for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim advocacy group, condemned Trump’s comments.
“These remarks are completely outrageous,” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national communications director, told Yahoo News. “They endanger the lives of ordinary American Muslims. Every day, we’re receiving reports of assaults and threats against Muslim American citizens due to the unprecedented rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric.”
Trump's remarks are not outrageous in the implied sense of being untrue. The truth, "Islam hates us" is outrageous. The rest of Mr. Hooper's comments are fair concern. We must NOT endanger Muslim American lives and property. Donald Trump needs to show his support for American Muslims.
Is it wise policy? There are the Brothers Tsarnaev and the San Bernardino couple. No. It does not seem wise to me. America has not been much threatened by Muslim immigration, certainly not by the existing Muslim American community. The danger is from abroad. The danger is not from those who immigrate to America it is from those who do not immigrate and from those who immigrate and then go back.
America can be a radicalizing influence. It was for Sayyid Qutb who studied in the U.S., was appalled by the mixing of the sexes and went back to Egypt TO FOUND RADICAL ISLAM. The Mother Tsarnaev went back. "Fingers" Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam, got a PhD from the London School of Economics and then went back to Libya to help dad. Song Binbin got her PhD from MIT, lived here for a long while, went back to China, unable to escape her Red Guard past.
Those are isolated instances, maybe there is not a more general problem with foreign exchange students, but those are instances, they are real. It makes sense to me to look at the data on foreign exchange and see if there's a bigger problem. If so it makes sense to me that those who come to the U.S. simply to get a degree and then go back have no intent to assimilate American values and conversely that those who immigrate with the intent to make America their permanent home have every intent to assimilate.
President Obama and his administration will not even use terms like "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam." There's extremism generally and singularly, Presbyterian and Mormon and Muslim, but not "Islamic extremism." The scandal of Benghazi, to me, is not whether there was inadequate protection for Ambassador Chris Stevens but rather the Obama/Clinton State Department's immediate contention that it was "Innocence of Muslims" that was the cause of the violent protests throughout the Muslim world on that day and in the days that followed.
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday in an interview from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. “There’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
"...there is tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred for the United States."
Cooper asked if there was a war between the West and radical Islam or Islam itself.
"It's radical but it's very hard to define," Trump said. "It's very hard to separate, because you don't know who's who."
It is hard. The Brothers Tsnarnaev ("We Muslims are all one body.")
The brash billionaire pointed to the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists as proof of the difficulty.
"These two young people that got married, she supposedly radicalized him,” Trump said. “The bottom line is they killed 14 people that gave them baby showers. I mean they were friends of theirs, so they walked in then they killed them. There’s an unbelievable hatred. You look at Paris, 138 people killed, many, many people going to die in the hospital, mortally wounded, horribly wounded, um, horribly wounded. And they walk into a room and boom, boom, boom. There’s, there’s a sickness going on that’s unbelievable.”
Trump's plan to halt Muslim immigration: I think that is constitutional. No one has the right to immigrate to the U.S. But I don't know for sure if banning a specific religious group from immigrating is constitutional.
If halting Muslim immigration is constitutional is it wise? Trump repeats here what he said previously, that it is a temporary ban "until we figure out" what is going on with Muslim attitudes. I don't know what he means there. There is nothing to figure out in my opinion, nor in Trump's seemingly. They "hate us," which I believe is fair stereotype. If Trump means we have to be discriminating in individual cases because it is hard to tell "who's who" in individual cases, absolutely.
The Obamas say to all of this: It justifies and encourages IS' and others violence and it threatens the existing Muslim community in America. On the first point, we are at war with IS, we are at war with a not precisely defined LARGE portion of Islamia, the Obamas and Bushes won't say that but we are, the Islamic groups say they're at war with us!, and we need to prosecute this as a war. "Bomb the shit out of IS," absolutely.
On the second point:
The spokesman for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim advocacy group, condemned Trump’s comments.
“These remarks are completely outrageous,” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national communications director, told Yahoo News. “They endanger the lives of ordinary American Muslims. Every day, we’re receiving reports of assaults and threats against Muslim American citizens due to the unprecedented rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric.”
Trump's remarks are not outrageous in the implied sense of being untrue. The truth, "Islam hates us" is outrageous. The rest of Mr. Hooper's comments are fair concern. We must NOT endanger Muslim American lives and property. Donald Trump needs to show his support for American Muslims.
Is it wise policy? There are the Brothers Tsarnaev and the San Bernardino couple. No. It does not seem wise to me. America has not been much threatened by Muslim immigration, certainly not by the existing Muslim American community. The danger is from abroad. The danger is not from those who immigrate to America it is from those who do not immigrate and from those who immigrate and then go back.
America can be a radicalizing influence. It was for Sayyid Qutb who studied in the U.S., was appalled by the mixing of the sexes and went back to Egypt TO FOUND RADICAL ISLAM. The Mother Tsarnaev went back. "Fingers" Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam, got a PhD from the London School of Economics and then went back to Libya to help dad. Song Binbin got her PhD from MIT, lived here for a long while, went back to China, unable to escape her Red Guard past.
Those are isolated instances, maybe there is not a more general problem with foreign exchange students, but those are instances, they are real. It makes sense to me to look at the data on foreign exchange and see if there's a bigger problem. If so it makes sense to me that those who come to the U.S. simply to get a degree and then go back have no intent to assimilate American values and conversely that those who immigrate with the intent to make America their permanent home have every intent to assimilate.
