Republican presidential hopefuls go for Muslim-bashing

If the two national debates of the Republican Party or GOP (Grand Old Party) candidates have underlined anything thus far, it has established that the Party is short of real issues with which to fight the Democrats in the November 2016 presidential election. Even if the candidates had any vision to begin with on how to fight the Democratic Party for the White House going to the debates, the tsunami-like impact with which Donald Trump has made his presence felt in the debates and developments thereafter, it is highly debatable if the word vision can at this stage be used with the Republican Party's preparedness to fight for the White House.
Issues such as immigration, the Iran nuclear deal and USA's role in the world have been rolled into the centre as major issues for the presidential election. The fact that these issues have been pushed ahead of major ones like the economy, jobs, and taxes is not the real problem for the Republican Party. The real problem is the way these issues have been spun. Thus these candidates are favouring throwing all 11 million illegal immigrants out of the country by force if necessary; building a "Big Wall" with Mexico; trashing the Iran nuclear deal even if that meant a war with Iran, and behaving like the world is there to serve US and US interests only!
That Muslims and Muslim-bashing would be turned into an issue in the 2016 presidential election from such a pack is only natural. For quite sometime now, since ISIS emerged as the new terrorist group replacing the Al-Qaeda, there have been attempts in the right wing media in the United States to connect this new terrorist group with the Muslims worldwide to start a new round to humiliate Islam. The attempt to connect ISIS with Muslims has been made first by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in the second presidential debate. He said if ISIS succeeded, it would bring the Muslims worldwide under an Islamic Caliphate!! Therefore, he was all for doing whatever it required to end ISIS forever. He did not blink an eyelid in suggesting that ISIS and Muslims are the same.
It was surprising though that Rick Santorum beat Donald Trump to Muslim-bashing. But true to form, Donald Trump quickly took over from the Senator and spun it to take the focus away from him and turn Muslim-bashing into a serious election issue. It happened dramatically. In a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, an individual attracted the attention of the GOP front-runner by shouting at him: "We have a problem in the country. It is called Muslims. Our President is one." Having attracted his attention, the man then asked him: "We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"
The questioner did not see in the jihadists or the Islamic fundamentalists but the Muslims as the problem! And what did Donald Trump do? His first reaction was "a lot of people are saying that" which suggested that he agreed with the questioner; that in the United States a lot of people now believe that the Muslims as a community are a problem. Even in the days and weeks following 9/11 when Muslims were targeted, no major political leader on either side of the political divide expressed such a view publicly. Donald Trump's campaign team later played down the damaging consequences of the response. A spokesman from the team said that the candidate's words that "a lot of people are saying that" was uttered in reference to the training camps and the need to get rid of them and not to Muslims as the "problem."
The explanation was a lame one. Donald Trump's response was one of choice designed to reach the extreme right wing base of the Republican Party that has so far been responsible for his unbelievable showing in the polls where he is leading by a huge margin; a base that has been waiting for Muslim-bashing to become an election issue. In fact, he concluded his exchange with the bigoted questioner by validating his bigotry with the sarcastic remark "Some of them (Muslims) I suppose are good people".
The second front-runner Dr. Ben Carson underlined the electoral value of Muslim-bashing when he stated on ABC's "Meet the Nation" that he "absolutely would not agree to put a Muslim in charge of the Nation." He said he does  not object to a Muslim being elected to the Congress though but is  convinced that a President of USA cannot be a Muslim, what the Constitution said or any other issue to the contrary notwithstanding. The retired surgeon, like Donald Trump, tried to cash on with Muslim-bashing to reach the extreme right of the Republican Party. He in fact tried to get extra mileage than Donald Trump did out of Muslim bashing. Aware that the right wing he wanted to reach hated the President for many reasons one of which is that they consider him a Muslim, Carson identified President Barack Obama as a Muslim.
Dr. Ben Carson's dubious attempt to use President Obama in cashing upon Muslim-bashing for electoral value disgusted another Republican African-American former US Secretary of State General Colin Powell. Hurt and angry, the former Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff during the First Gulf War and one who was once considered the most likely African-American to be the first coloured President of the US, said in a TV interview that senior members of the Republican Party have been dropping the suggestion that President Obama is a Muslim and going on to further suggest that being a Muslim automatically means being a terrorist.
General Powell corrected the Party by stating in a TV interview that the President is a Christian and has always been a Christian. He stated further that the "really right answer" to the undesired controversy over the President's religion even if he were a Muslim, it would not make him any different from being what he is. He then asked two rhetoric questions: first, whether there is anything wrong in the United States in being a Muslim and whether any seven-year-old Muslim kid is wrong in hoping that one day he/she would become the President of the country. He dismissed both questions with an emphatic no. He ended his interview expressing disgust at attempts of senior members to suggest being a Muslim connects one to terrorist activities.
It is high time for individuals like the General, who is held across the political divide as a voice of conscience, to stand against this Muslim-bashing for political gains. There are at present seven million Muslims in USA who are making their presence felt in the country by contributing as good citizens and have done nothing to earn the wrath and the xenophobic attacks from the senior leaders of the Republican Party, particularly from the likes of Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Even as an electoral issue, Muslim-bashing is not a good idea because in the end while it may bring to those who are doing this the votes of the extreme right, such xenophobic views are going to drive many more voters from the candidates who are Muslim bashing in the presidential election against a Democratic candidate. And this time, because of the Muslim-bashing, the Muslims as a bloc will for the first time vote against the Republican Party unless between now and election time, Muslim-bashing is abandoned for some bridge building with the Muslim community.
Pope Francis during his visit to the USA (September 22-27) apparently alluded to the issue of Muslim-bashing.  In his meeting with President Obama and in the address to the Joint House of Congress, the Pope asked for tolerance and compassion that was a veiled hint of disagreement with the Muslim-bashing in the GOP. In fact, in his address to 11000 invited guests in the South Lawn of the White House, the Pope said that "the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible, and should therefore be respected as such."
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
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