Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Muslim travel proposal, stating, “Even if we could do it, I don’t think we can, but even if we could do it, I think it’s a bad approach” on Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360.”
Ali said of Trump’s proposal, “I think it’s a bad idea. I don’t think we should do what Trump is saying. Even if we could do it, I don’t think we can, but even if we could do it, I think it’s a bad approach and it creates this a false promise, where a large number of American voters think that if they elect Trump, that he has the solution to this long-term ideological war.”
Earlier Ali stated there are “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Muslims are radicalized, around the world and in the United States of America, as well. and the big question for us is — and again, I don’t like the word ‘radical’ or ‘radicalized.’ These are people who have become more pious and who tend to observe Islam literally. They take the Koran literally. They observe — they try to follow in the example of the prophet Mohammed literally. That’s what we’ve come to call radical in extreme. And that — the people who have that mentality and that mindset are not a minority, and they’re not a fringe minority.”
She continued, “the number of people who believe in this, within Muslim communities and families, definitely not all, but it is so large, that these individuals who want to take, an action, to take it beyond believing, and beyond practicing but actually want to kill people, they have a large enough group to hide in.
Ali also argued that she doesn’t believe friends and family members who say they didn’t know the San Bernardino attack was being planned, adding, “the uncomfortable truth really, there is a great deal of consensus, in terms of belief. The family or some of the family members may not want themselves to execute an act of jihad, but if a fellow believer is doing that, and he’s investing in martyrdom, then who are you as a believer to stop him or even worse, to report him to the infidel authorities? It’s once you understand that mentality and that process, then we can get to, okay, how can we perhaps persuade people these ideas are bad? But to do that, we have to call a spade a spade.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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