In his second intervention in the U.S. Presidential election, British Prime Minister David Cameron has accused Republican Party hopeful Donald Trump of helping Islamic extremists to create their desired “clash of civilisations between Islam and the West.”
The comments attacking Donald Trump’s approach towards Islamic extremism were made by Prime Minister David Cameron at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during an interview with the news website Mic.
According to him, the problem with what Mr. Trump and others have said in relation to what Mr Cameron calls “the battle of our generation” is that they make “a fundamental mistake of trying to blame all of Islam and all Muslims for what is the ideology and the actions of a minority”. He added:
“In many ways, it actually helps the extremists, because they want to create a clash of civilisations between Islam and Christianity, or Islam and the West.”
Not only did Mr. Cameron reject Mr. Trump’s position, he also went on to promote a rather rose-tinted view of society, saying:
“Actually, what’s happening is not a clash of civilisations. It is a fight within Islam, where the overwhelming majority rightly see Islam as a religion of peace, and want to live in successful multiracial, multi-ethnic, multifaith democracies like ours, and make an incredible contribution to our country, as opposed to a small minority that believe this rhetoric of poisonous extremism, and many of this tiny minority then believing in violence.”
Mr. Cameron’s conclusion was explicit:
“…what Donald Trump says is, in my view, not only wrong, but actually it makes the work we need to do to confront and defeat the extremists more difficult.”
Mr. Cameron did not merely criticise Mr. Trump, he was also keen to praise President Obama saying they work “extremely well together” on their approach to combating Islamic extremism with efforts that see them “very closely aligned”.
British Prime Ministers are normally more reluctant to be seen to intervene in U.S. elections as they often end up working very closely with whoever is in the White House, but this is now the second time Mr. Cameron has attacked Mr. Trump.
As Breitbart reported in December, speaking in the British Parliament Mr. Cameron described Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims temporarily from immigrating to or visiting the United States as “divisive, stupid and wrong”.