The Facts:
The story start when Donald Trump’s campaign released a press release that “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Khizr Khan is the father of Humayun Khan. Humayun was a Captain in the Army when he was killed in 2004 in Iraq. Humayun Khan was a Muslim. At the Democratic Convention, Khizr Khan gave a speech attacking Donald Trump and his views of Muslims. In the speech, Khizr Khan claimed that Donald Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one.”
View his entire speech here:
Donald Trump responded “‘I’ve Made a Lot of Sacrifices.”
Then he mentioned that “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”
Trump Tweeted “This story is not about Mr. Khan, who is all over the place doing interviews, but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the U.S. Get smart!”
The Commentary:
When Trump first announced that their campaign was about banning Muslims, it was back when Donald Trump was still fighting for the Republican primary. It turns out that this idea appeals a lot to Republicans. The danger is that it is not a well thought out idea and it doesn’t appeal to many moderates. Here’s are the big problems with this idea.
First, how will someone be identified as Muslim? If a terrorist knows that we are not letting Muslim’s into the country, what stops them from changing their reported religion. Also, people (think TSA officers) would make errors when determining the religion of someone. They may think that Italian people (who are often darker skinned) as Muslim. It creates a precedence where officers (sometimes unethical a-holes) decide who can and cannot enter the country.
Second, there are a large number of legitimate Muslims citizens that travel outside the country. Just look at the Khan family. There are many families like the Khans that are not linked to terrorism and are Muslims.
Third, singling out Muslims for terrorist attacks ignores other types of terrorists of different nationalities and origins. It turns out that many terrorists are home grown or from non-Muslim background. If all the focus is spent on Muslims, people tasked with finding and preventing terrorist attacks will not stop attacks by non-Muslims.
Fourth, there is already a system in place to detect people who are thought to be terrorists. It’s called the no fly list. This list is built by the NSA and CIA. It is used to identify people that are likely to become terrorists.
Donald Trump’s idea comes off as a type of racist and naïve. His ideas are built on islamophobia, and they don’t solve any problems. We’ll have the same types of terrorist attacks under Donald Trump.
Khizr Khan did a great job in pointing out how screwed up Donald Trump’s plan is to singling out people of Muslim faith. Singling out people of a religion isn’t part of our constitution or our country.