Written by Tresia Bowles’, Staff Writer
When Yahoo asked Donald Trump if he might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion he responded, “Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.”
Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
If protecting the country from terrorists is Trump’s main concern, Trump’s comments are certainly more frightful than reassuring.
Quite frankly, Donald Trump has to be out of his mind if he thinks requiring identification is going to protect us from terrorism, when many of the attacks on our country are from people of other religions and backgrounds.
I don’t understand Trump’s logic. Throughout his campaign, his comments have offended so many groups of people. He won’t have the Black vote, he won’t have the Latino vote, and now he certainly won’t have the Muslim vote. How can anyone run a successful campaign like this?
Let’s think about his proposed plan logically. First of all, not all Muslims are terrorists. America has allowed 9/11 and the media to manipulate people into thinking that Muslims are the enemy instead of blaming the actual terrorist groups.
Now let’s look at some statistics, according to data collected by Mother of Jones magazine 64 percent of mass shootings in the United States since 1982 have been committed by white males, not people of color or Muslims. So who is the real enemy? Is Trump just going to overlook the numerous mass shootings? Are we just going to look past the unpunished police officers or the Dylan Roofs, Adam Lanzas, and the James Holmes?
To play devil’s advocate, sure, one of the worst bombings in this millennium was committed by an extremist Islamic group, but even if we add all of those causalities together it doesn’t amount to the thousands of innocent people who have been killed by non-Muslims in America. Furthermore, a small group of extremists don’t represent an entire religion.
Instead of wasting energy unnecessarily harassing Muslim Americans, let’s focus our time on securing our schools so that another Sandy Hook incident doesn’t happen. Let’s secure our movie theatres so that families can go see Batman without fearing for their lives. Let’s make cops have to register into a database showing that they have had racist or aggressive tendencies in the past before we hand them a certification to be an officer. Those kinds of concepts seem more logical. Torturing and ostracizing Muslims should be the last of our worries right now.
What happened in France was absolutely devastating, yes, but this is not how we respond to terrorists. Pointing out a terrorist is not as easy as IDing Muslims. This is not the first time Trump has put his foot in his mouth, but he seems to not care about the public response. Therefore, the public won’t care to vote for him if they know what’s good for the country.