Trump and Islam: Religious criterion for entry to U.S. is antithetical to who we are

Followers of the 2016 presidential race have come to expect bombastic statements from Republican candidate Donald Trump. The billionaire is constantly coming up with ideas and proposals that garner attention, if not voters.

But Trump's recent call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States tops even his most outrageous previous ideas. And it flies in the face of what this country stands for.

Freedom of religion is one of the notions that led our Founding Fathers to separate from England. It is a bedrock of our existence, a right that without which we would not be the nation we say we are.

We have agreed with politicians who have called for an embargo on people entering the country from Iraq and Syria -- places where international terrorists are known to be based. That is just common sense.

But an all out call to ban every Muslim believer from approaching our shores is going too far. It is religious discrimination, pure and simple, and something true believers in the Constitution should find abhorrent and automatically disclaim.

Published in Editorials on December 9, 2015 11:54 AM