“Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is not only shameful and offensive, it’s also dangerous,” said Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for the 2016 US presidential election.
The former secretary of state told CNN’s Democratic town hall in Iowa on Monday night that Mr Trump, the Republican front-runner, suffered from “Islamophobia”.
Mrs Clinton blasted Mr Trump for his anti-Muslim views when a Muslim veteran of the US Air Force, Erum Tariq-Munir, explained how such views hurt her. “Specifically, as a mother of three young children, as an American Muslim, how can I make sure that this country is the best place on earth to raise my family?” she asked.
After thanking Mrs Tariq-Munir for her service, Mrs Clinton said: “One of the most distressing aspects of this campaign has been the language of Republican candidates, particularly their front-runner, that insults, demeans, and denigrates different people.”
She noted that Mr Trump’s comments on Muslims were “particularly harmful”, although he had cast a wide net, targeting all minorities. “He started on Mexicans. He’s currently on Muslims. But I found it particularly harmful the way that he has talked about Muslims – American Muslims and Muslims around the world”.
Mrs Clinton has previously called his rhetoric “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive”.
She echoed these sentiments at the town hall meeting as well, saying: “It’s not only shameful and contrary to our values to say that people of a certain religion should never come to this country or to claim that there are no real people of the Muslim faith who share our values”.
She noted that to “have the kind of dismissive and insulting approach is not only shameful and offensive – which it is – I think it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous in several ways”.
She said she considered these views dangerous also because now not only American Muslims but their children too were the target of Islamophobia and threats. “I think, American Muslims deserve better,” she added.
Mrs Clinton said she recently met a number of parents who told her their children were afraid to go to school because of possible Trump-inspired bullying by youngsters.
“We cannot tolerate this. And we must stand up and say every person in this country deserves to be treated with respect and we must stand up against the bullying,” she said.
Mrs Clinton pointed out how many American Muslims were working with law enforcement to prevent radicalisation, and how it was important to work with Muslim countries to fight the militant IS group.
She said that during a recent visit to Minneapolis, she met a big group of Somali-Americans who were also on the front lines of trying to protect their children from radicalisation. “We need to stand up and point out how wrong this is,” she added.
While reporting Mrs Clinton’s remarks, some US media outlets noted that crimes targeting Muslims tripled in 2015, and that Mr Trump’s rhetoric likely contributed to this rise.
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