‘Rabid’ dogs and closing mosques: Anti-Islam rhetoric grows in GOP

Carson:  Not all Muslims are like rabid dogs, just one might be.

One of the front-runners in the Republican presidential race said Thursday he would “absolutely” want a database of Muslims in the country and wouldn’t rule out giving them special ID cards that noted their religion.

Another top candidate likened Syrian refugees — who are largely Muslim — to dogs. Some of them might be rabid, he said, which was reason to keep them all out.

And a third stood up in the Senate on Thursday and called for banning refugees from five Middle Eastern countries. He was explicit that the point was to keep Muslim refugees out while letting Christians from the same places in.


A week after terrorists tied to the Islamic State terrorist group killed 129 people in Paris, some Republican politicians have responded with the kind of rhetoric that another Republican — George W. Bush — explicitly avoided after the al-Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In the angry aftermath, Bush said that “Islam is peace” and that all Muslims should not be judged for the deeds of a few radicals.

But in this election — already defined by a suspicion of government and anger about immigration — the rhetoric on Muslims has become a dominant feature of the Republican response to the attacks. It also comes as 47 House Democrats joined with 242 Republicans on Thursday to pass a bill placing new security constraints on President Obama’s pledge to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees, most of whom would be Muslim.

Source