The forced registration of any faith group is so abhorrent that it can only be described by words we generally avoid to preserve their integrity for moments like this: Trump’s position is nakedly prejudiced, proto-fascist, and un-American. It would be troubling even if he expressed his views off-the-cuff, without having thought them through. It is more worrisome in the context of a previous interview where he declared that “we’re going to have no choice” but to shut down some mosques in the United States, and a town hall in which he failed to challenge––and arguably encouraged––a voter who asked him about getting rid of Muslims in the United States.

This record ought to make Trump anathema to anyone who has concerns about religious liberty in America. Had he aimed his remarks at any Christian denomination, his candidacy would effectively be over because of the backlash. The fact that his positions pose a stark threat to the religious liberty of Muslim Americans ought to be enough to provoke a backlash. Insofar as it leaves some Christians unmoved, they might reflect on how much damage would be done to their religious liberty if a president of the United States successfully set a precedent for a religious registry or empowered the government to shut down places of worship.

Jonah Goldberg makes this point at National Review:

...getting the federal government involved in tracking and labeling citizens’ religious affiliations is abhorrent on the merits and a huge invitation to profound mischief down the road. Creating databases on all members of any religion is a terrible idea as well. I don’t mind “monitoring mosques,” if there is intelligence suggesting that a specific one needs to be monitored. But a blanket policy of monitoring all mosques strikes me as a major assault on religious liberty — and a spectacular waste of resources. Trump is right — or at least may be right — when he says that some mosques may need to be shut down when “some bad things happen” — if those bad things were plotted or advanced by those mosques. I’m all for cutting through the PC platitudes about how Islamic extremism isn’t Islamic. But I have little interest in going so far the other way that we actually resemble the straw men the Left has been screaming about all along.

The current leader in the Republican Party’s presidential primary is now unambiguously on record with positions incompatible with religious freedom in America. How many voters will cast ballots for a man like that? The answer will go some way toward telling us if claims about pervasive anti-Muslim prejudice are a straw man or not, and how willing religious groups are to stand up for the rights of other denominations. Once again, Trump has failed one of the most basic tests of leadership.

Whether he will pay a price remains to be seen.