Trump has said he would be open to creating a national database of Muslims and monitoring mosques, and claimed that "thousands and thousands" of Muslim Americans in New Jersey celebrated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001-- something for which no evidence has emerged.
"Politicians are saying things very irresponsibly, and those statements are reverberating across the masses," said Michael Smith, , imam of the Islamic Society of Annapolis and resident scholar at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. "That's dangerous, extremely dangerous." Smith said he worries the rhetoric will increase polarization and fear in America.
New York Post's "Muslim Killers" Front Page
Meanwhile, American Muslims have expressed concern over the New York Post's front page about the San Bernardino Shooting.
A version of the New York Post's cover on Thursday features "Muslim Killers" in giant letters, over an image of injured victims from the San Bernardino shooting,
Robert McCaw, government affairs department manager of CAIR national, told Mic of New Yorker, "I think it's the lowest common denominator of fear-mongering to change their front page to 'Muslim Killers,'" McCaw added. "It endangers the Muslim community and it seeks to legitimize anti-Muslim hysteria."
"Muslims are no more responsible for yesterday's terrible events than Christians are for Planned Parenthood," McCaw said of the last week attack on the reproductive health organization, which left three people dead.
Farhan Khan Virk, a Muslim social and political activist in Pakistan, told Mic the front page left him speechless. "This is not the first time something like this has happened," Virk said. "They are always looking to us Muslims to justify ourselves and we just came out of the Paris tragedy, where we had to do the same thing."
McCaw said the Paris attacks were responsible for a rise in violence and threats against Muslims in America and that CAIR has since received an unusually high number of American Muslims calling to report being targeted.
(Article changed on December 5, 2015 at 00:50)
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