Alwaght-United States Muslims have decried leading Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s call for law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods”.
Cruz called for a freeze on any new refugees from areas affected by Al Qaeda and the ISIS terrorist group, as well as new powers for law enforcement to patrol “Muslim neighborhoods.”
His remarks came hours after two terrorist attacks on Tuesday in Brussels, the EU’s de facto capital, which left over 34 people dead. ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the carnage.
“We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant Al Qaeda or ISIS presence,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization called on Cruz to retract and apologize for his unconstitutional policy proposal.
Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, warned that Cruz’s plan is “unconstitutional, un-American and dangerous.”
“It’s shocking that a leading presidential candidate in our nation in 2016 would suggest monitoring a section of our American society just because of its religious faith,” Awad said on Tuesday. “He claims in his speeches to defend religious liberty, but he seems to be fake when it comes to this.”
Awad linked the comments to Cruz’s announcement last week adding Frank Gaffney — a figure who has made controversial statements about Muslims and questioned President Obama's birthplace — to his foreign policy team.
“To appoint such extremist conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney says a lot about his mindset and what he may implement in terms of conspiracy theories and make them into policies,” Awad said. “This is going to be devastating to our democracy."
CAIR has also condemned the naming of notorious Islamophobe Walid Phares as one of leading GOP candidate Donald Trump’s policy advisers. In a recent meeting with The Washington Post's editorial board, Trump named Phares as one of his foreign policy advisers. Phares was once a leading ideologue in an armed Christian faction during Lebanon's grim, bloody sectarian civil conflict of the 1980s.
“Trump’s naming of a policy adviser who was once linked to a foreign anti-Muslim militia sends the message that American Muslims would be targeted in a Trump administration. We ask Donald Trump to immediately drop Walid Phares from his team of advisers because of his extremist views and his past associations with a violent foreign militia,” said Awad.
Credo Action Political Director Murshed Zaheed said Cruz and GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump are "in a race to the bottom to gin up racism-fueled xenophobia."
"Scapegoating entire communities and encouraging Americans to be suspicious of their Muslim neighbors may score points with some Republican primary voters, but it won’t do anything to make us safer,” Zaheed added in a statement.
The group previously launched a petition calling on the Republican presidential field to "denounce Islamophobia and stop spreading head."
