Washington: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, on Monday stoked a controversy by calling for blanket ban on Muslims from entering the United states.
He was speaking at a rally in South Carolina in response to last week’s by two radical Muslims.
Warning of more September 11-style attacks if stern actions are not taken, Trump said that the US no choice.
This statement of preventing Muslim immigration drew fierce criticism from various quaters, including his rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Withering reaction flowed in from former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton tweeted that Trump’s idea was “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.” But conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote, “GO TRUMP, GO!”
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, blasted Trump.
“This is outrageous coming from someone who wants to assume the highest office in the land. It is reckless and simply un-American. Donald Trump sounds more like a leader of a lynch mob than a great nation like ours,” Awad said.
“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,” Trump said.
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, asked in an email if the shutdown would apply specifically to immigration or more broadly to student visas, tourists and other travellers to the United States, replied: “Everyone.”
In Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Trump dismissed his critics. He told a rally that mosques in the United States should also be scrutinized. “We have to see what’s happening,” he said.
Trump went farther than other Republican candidates, who have called for a suspension of a plan by President Barack Obama to bring into the United States as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their country’s civil war and Islamic State militants.
Obama on Sunday night in an Oval Office address called on Americans to be tolerant of fellow citizens regardless of their religion.
