Early last month, Donald Trump shocked the American electorate by “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until [the] country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
While it wasn’t entirely clear what Trump meant by “until lawmakers can figure out what is going on,” the message was unequivocal: the GOP frontrunner was calling for the nation to filter those entering the country based on religion.
In the wake of Trump’s declaration, many analysts, commentators, and pundits assumed the brazen billionaire had finally crossed the line. That is, up to that point, Trump had proven to be largely “gaffe proof,” so to speak. Nothing he said - from calling illegal immigrants “rapists” to suggesting Fox anchor Megyn Kelly was “bleeding out of her wherever” - seemed to dent his run for the White House and in fact, his poll numbers seemed to rise with each passing insult.
The Muslim ban however, would be another story. Or so many people thought.
As it turns out, Trump’s lead over the rest of the field only widened as his message with regard to combating radical Islam resonated with many Americans who are struggling to discern how best to ensure what happened in Paris doesn’t happen in New York or Washington DC.
Irrespective of one’s take on Trump’s Muslim diktat, it was fairly obvious from the beginning that extremists around the world would use it to recruit. Here’s what Hillary Clinton said during the third Democratic primary debate: "He is becoming ISIS's best recruiter. They are going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists."
That’s not so much a politically-motivated attack on Trump from an entrenched member of America’s political aristocracy as it is an objective assessment of reality. That is, if you were a member of an extremist group and you were in charge of recruiting, you’d be remiss not to mention Trump.
For his part, Trump denies the allegations. Here’s what he said in the wake of Clinton’s comments:
“Nobody has been able to back that up. It’s nonsense. It’s just another Hillary lie. She lies like crazy about everything, whether it’s trips where she was being gunned down in a helicopter or an airplane. She’s a liar, and everybody knows that. But she just made this up in thin air. No fact-checker has been able to back up her claim on that.”
Well, no fact checkers are needed now because al-Shabaab (al-Qaeda's Somali arm) has released the following video featuring Trump:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTqlqr_zdzM
Besides Trump, the video stars Anwar al-Awlaki, the top al-Qaeda recruiter who was killed in a US drone strike in 2011. "There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon," al-Awlaki says. "Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan. And tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps," he continues.
Will Trump shake this off with the ease he's shed each and every controversy surrounding his campaign thus far? Probably.
However, it's worth noting that al-Awlaki gives Muslims living in the West "two choices": "Either you leave, or you fight," he says. How would voters respond if this particular video were to serve as the inspiration for an attack on American soil by a US citizen? Would it cause the portion of the electorate who supports the notion of a Muslim ban to reconsier their position or, would such a tragedy only strengthen Trump's hand by reinforcing the link between Islam and violence?
We'll leave it to readers to decide.