Image Courtesy of [Gage Skidmore via Flickr]
Elections
This Week in Islamophobia: Carson, Trump, and Ahmed Mohamed
Last week the story of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed and his clock shed a sickening light on the prevalence of Islamophobia and racial profiling in our country. And while so many chose to #StandWithAhmed, others continued the anti-Muslim rhetoric throughout the rest of the week. The biggest culprits of this were perhaps none other than Republican primary frontrunners Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
During Sunday’s taping of “Meet the Press” Carson was asked if the United States should ever elect a Muslim president. He responded saying, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”
However when it came to electing a Muslim to Congress, Carson was a little more lenient with his bigotry saying,
Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just like it depends on what anybody else is. If there’s somebody who is of any faith but they say things and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them.
You can watch that portion of the interview in full in the video below:
Carson’s unmistakably offensive remarks were prompted in response to some anti-Muslim comments made by an audience goer during a Trump campaign rally just a few days prior that came under fire. The unidentified audience member stood up during the Rochester, New Hampshire town hall Q&A to tell Trump the following:
We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American.
To which Trump jokingly responded, “We need this question. This is the first question.” The man continued saying,
Anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?
Trump’s only response was,
We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.
But at no point did he correct the audience member’s flawed and offensive comments.
The exchange acted as a throwback to Trump’s 2011 crusade against Obama’s heritage, where he championed the push to see the president’s birth certificate and repeatedly accused him of secretly being a Muslim. Even though the White House eventually released the president’s birth certificate to the public, showing for a fact that Obama was born in the United States, 20 percent of Americans still believe he was born outside the country and 29 percent of Americans say that they think the President is a Muslim, including 43 percent of Republicans.
Trump has never apologized.
In many respects Trump played a critical role in many American’s misperceptions about the President’s identity, so by not correcting a clearly prejudiced supporter’s offensive “Muslim question” he’s only perpetuating the problem.
When Trump was asked why he didn’t make the correction he told the Today Show,
Why should I come to the defense of the president? He’s not going to come to my defense and I think most people agreed with what I did.
The comments from both of these commander-in-chief hopefuls represent an unsettling irony among Republicans who argue in support of religious freedom, while condemning Islam in the same breath. It seems like the debate over religious freedom is fundamentally a fight for Christian freedom and nothing else. If all faiths were truly given the same respect, Islamophobia wouldn’t be running rampant in Republican ranks.
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