US Republicans shamefully shred the constitution

The way Islam and American Muslims have been treated in the current US presidential race is deeply disturbing. Opinions nurtured and policies formulated in the run-up to the election just over a year from now are bound to have a far-reaching impact both within the United States and across the world.

Thailand is not unaffected, having sent troops to fight in the Middle East as part of the US-led military coalition. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not against Islam, of course, but many Muslim regarded them as assaults on their faith nonetheless, a view widely shared in the Thai South.

It’s apparent that most, if not all, of America’s Republican candidates for president are denigrating Islam to gain support from the conservative voters who must choose the party’s nominee from among a glut of hopefuls. Perhaps they are personally tolerant of Islam and merely espousing bigotry for now. Perhaps they will dampen their rhetoric if chosen as nominee, after which they will have to appeal to a broader electorate. Regardless, there is no justification for their recent rash of prejudice.

America has always been touted as the world’s beacon of democracy and we’ve come to expect better from its leaders and would-be leaders. Addressing the far-right segment of the polarised republic, however, we witness the likes of Donald Trump castigating an entire Muslim world when he clearly does not understand the fundamental elements that make it so complex.

Trump, a brash property tycoon, does not know the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas but, since the US government considers both “terrorist” organisations, he is inflammatory in his condemnation. He is unwilling to recognise any distinction between them, even if one is an extension of a government with which Washington has been negotiating a nuclear deal.

Candidate Ben Carson has said a Muslim could never be elected president because Islam and the US constitution are incompatible. In fact, that very document counsels that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”. It effectively raises a barricade between church and state, which Carson prefers to ignore.

How could an educated man like Carson, retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has responded, get the facts so wrong, to the detriment of millions of American Muslims like him, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding citizens? Carson is an African-American as well, and yet he slurs the legacy of the black leaders of America’s civil-rights struggle.

Candidate Mike Huckabee has criticised President Barrack Obama for undercutting Christians and Jews in giving “support” to Muslims. Huckabee previously railed against letting Muslims rent activity rooms in Christian churches because they regard the followers of Jesus as “infidels”. In fact, the historical Prophet Muhammad considered Jesus a genuine messiah (Judaism does not).

The Republicans are of course “preaching to the converted”. Trump was not about to correct a speaker at a town-hall meeting last week who insisted that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim. Trump, who finally admitted that Obama was born in the US after investing a fortune in efforts to prove otherwise, is for now only interested in benefiting from American fear and intolerance.

Trump and his ilk want to slam the door on immigration, forgetting their own origins abroad. Carson fires verbal barbs at Muslims, forgetting that the same hurtful language was widely used against black Americans not so long ago.

America’s first European settlers left their homelands to escape religious persecution, a fact enshrined in the all-embracing constitution. It is appalling that greed for power now subsumes democracy’s best-laid plans.