Martin Schram: Islamic State has a new recruiter-in-chief

He punched the entire political pantheon, in which nearly every Republican candidate has demonised Muslims, without being as inyour-face as Trump.

Trump’s mistake was to say “all” Muslims.

Following terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, California, the poll said Americans are more fearful about the likelihood of another terrorist attack than at any other time since the weeks after September 11, 2001. For me, if we had a Muslim candidate for President who had the ambition, leadership, and competence to lead this country in the right direction, and believed in the separation of church and state the same was as JFK did, I would vote for that person in a NY minute.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for these terrorist attacks that took the lives of countless people and injured many others.

I have personally gotten the pleasure to know many Muslim students on our campus. They have rights because they are citizens and most fundamentally, they have rights as the brothers and sisters in humanity of all the other members of humankind. Most of the survey was conducted before Donald Trump suggested temporarily blocking Muslims from entering the U.S. One of the pillars of ISIS’ ideology is that it is the true – and only – defender of Sunni Muslims, who are being persecuted in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and everywhere else where ISIS has carried out attacks, either directly or through its affiliates. You can be sure that ISIS would put that up on they social media campaign. So, why are we blaming all Muslims for the acts of a few who are using the Islamic religion to justify their hatred? The majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims reject this notion of takfir.

That fact becomes obscured as long as ISIS has new opportunities to portray itself as the defender of Muslims.

However, Americans don’t extend the same logic to the Islamic faith.

Islam’s spectacular birthrates, the relative youth of Muslims and the increase in Muslim immigration into the United States combine to account for its accelerated growth rate in the U.S. And 70% say that ISIS is a major threat to America’s security. Ordinary Muslims have no control over the actions of foreign or domestic terrorists and the legitimate fear of Muslim-Americans is that Trump is desensitizing the public regarding bigoted rhetoric and bigoted proposals.