A former US Marine has delivered the perfect riposte to Donald Trump’s refusal to rule out the suggestion that Muslims living in America should carry ID cards.
Tayyib Rashid, who says he served from 1997 to 2002, responded after Trump voiced support for creating a mandatory database to track Muslims living in the USA.
Rashid, whose goes under the name ProudAmericanMuslim on Twitter, addressed the Republican presidential hopeful directly, asking him: “Hey, I’m an American Muslim and I already carry a special ID badge. Where’s yours?”
The tweet, followed with Marine Corps motto Semper fi [which means ‘always faithful’ or ‘always loyal’ in Latin] has been retweeted more than 6,000 times, with many applauding Rashid’s sentiment.
Trump made his comments in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris.
Of a mandatory Muslim database, he told an NBC News reporter: "I would certainly implement that. Absolutely," the Associated Press reports.
Donald Trump said he would 'certainly implement' a mandatory Muslim database
He said Muslims would be signed up at "different places," adding, "It's all about management." Asked whether registration would be mandatory, Trump responded: "They have to be."
The latest comments come less than a week after the deadly attacks on a concert hall, sports stadium and restaurants in Paris that have elevated fears of attacks in in the U.S. and prompted calls for new restrictions on Syrian refugees fleeing their war-torn country.
While some of his rivals have been chastised by President Barack Obama for suggesting that Christian Syrian refugees be given preference over Muslims, Trump has gone further in his rhetoric, advocating new restrictions on civil liberties and enhanced surveillance activities, including inside mosques.
He said earlier this week that the country was "going to have no choice" but to close certain mosques because "really bad things are happening, and they're happening fast."
The first reference to the database idea came in an interview with Yahoo News published earlier Thursday in which the billionaire real estate mogul did not reject the idea of requiring Muslims to register in a database or giving them special identification cards noting their religion.
"We're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," Trump told Yahoo News.
SEE ALSO:
He also suggested he would consider warrantless searches, according to Yahoo, saying, "We're going to have to do things that we never did before."
Asked by reporters Thursday night to explain his Yahoo comments, Trump suggested his response had been misconstrued. "I never responded to that question," he said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement Thursday condemning Trump for what the group described as "Islamophobic and unconstitutional" comments targeting American Muslims and Syrian refugees.
They also criticized Trump rival Ben Carson, who on Thursday compared blocking potential terrorists posing as Syrian refugees from entering the US to handling a rabid dog.
"If there's a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog," Carson told reporters at a campaign stops in Alabama. "It doesn't mean you hate all dogs, but you're putting your intellect into motion."
"By mainstreaming Islamophobic and unconstitutional policies, Donald Trump and Ben Carson are contributing to an already toxic environment that may be difficult to correct once their political ambitions have been satisfied," CAIR's Robert McCaw said in a statement.
