Prominent politicians from Britain to Indonesia broke with the custom not to interject in other countries’ elections after Donald Trump’s latest comments

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Donald Trump’s call for a sweeping ban on Muslims entering the United States prompted howls of protest around the world from national leaders to ordinary citizens – even provoking calls for him to be banned from Britain.



Prominent politicians make a general habit of not interjecting with partisan comments during other countries’ election cycles. But Trump’s enduring frontrunner status in the run-up to the start of Republican primary voting, and the escalation in his inflammatory remarks, persuaded some to break cover.

Britain’s conservative prime minister David Cameron said in a statement that he “completely disagrees” with Trump’s comments and regards them as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong”.

Cameron’s Conservative colleague Sarah Wollaston, meanwhile, said a “serious discussion” was necessary to decide if Trump should be banned from Britain. His comment was “very offensive”, she told BuzzFeed.

Labour’s home office minister Jack Dromey called Trump a dangerous fool who should not be allowed within 1,000 miles of British shores.

Zac Goldsmith, the conservative candidate for London mayor, called the American business tycoon “an utterly repellent figure” and “one of the most malignant figures in politics”.

Trump expanded on his statements in an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday morning, where he repeated debunked claims there were parts of London and Paris where residents were so radicalized, law enforcement officers were afraid to venture there.

“Paris is no longer the safe city it was. They have sections in Paris that are radicalized, where the police refuse to go there. They’re petrified. The police refuse to go in there,” Trump said, refusing to name specific neighborhoods in the city. “We have places in London and other places that are so radicalized that the police are afraid for their own lives. We have to be very smart and very vigilant.”

With emotions so high in France since last month’s terror attacks, and with the far-right surging in regional electoral contests in the country, prime minister Manuel Valls followed Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the US with a comment on Twitter.

Translated from French, Valls’ tweet said: “Mr Trump, like others, stokes hatred: our ONLY enemy is radical Islam.”

Prominent self-made Dubai business leader Khalaf Al Habtoor spoke with regret on Tuesday about having vigorously supported Trump prior to his latest remarks, having written an enthusiastic article in a prominent Gulf newspaper last summer.

In August, Al Habtoor wrote an opinion piece for the Emirates publication the National, headlined: “Why I’m backing The Donald’s bid to be president”, praising the Republican contender as the “fearless doer” America needed.

On Tuesday, Al Habtoor lobbed fresh remarks at Trump, saying to NBC: “I’m sorry I ever supported you.”

He went on: “When he was talking about Muslims, attacking them ... I had to admit I made a mistake in my supporting Mr Trump. He is creating a hatred between Muslims and the United States of America.”

In an unusual move, the Canadian government, which usually refrains from commenting on foreign election campaigns, joined the chorus of those criticising Trump.

“It’s something that we can’t accept in Canada ... We have never been as far removed from what we’ve just heard in the United States,” foreign affairs minister Stephane Dion said.

Muslims make up around 3% of the population in Canada, which prides itself on being multicultural.

“No political party here could get anywhere near what’s been said in the United States, not even with an Olympic-style pole vault,” he said.

In Pakistan, where San Bernardino massacre suspect Tashfeen Malik had previously studied, one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Asma Jahangir, called Trump’s speech absurd.

“This is the worst kind of bigotry mixed with ignorance. I would imagine that someone who is hoping to become president of the US doesn’t want to compete with an ignorant criminal-minded mullah of Pakistan who denounces people of other religions ... Although we are not as advanced as the US, we have never elected such people to power in Pakistan,” she said.

Tahir Ashrafi, the head of the Ulema Council, Pakistan’s biggest council of Muslim clerics, said Trump’s comments promoted violence.

“If some Muslim leader says there is a war between Christians and Muslims, we condemn him. So why should we not condemn an American if he says that?”

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In Egypt, a statement from Dar al-Ifta, the country’s official religious body, called Trump’s remarks, “hate rhetoric” that would create tension and a hostile stance within American society against the almost eight million Muslims living there.

On the streets of Cairo some were skeptical.

Adham Hamada, a 34-year-old businessman who works in adventure travel, said: “How will they know if I’m Muslim or not? It’s not in my passport. That’s why I feel it’s just political talk. I can’t see how something like this could be implemented. But it’s meant to separate, nothing more. It’s hate speech.”

Bassem Youssef, a former Egyptian talk show host, satirist and popular comedian, criticized Trump on Twitter.

Dr Bassem Youssef (@DrBassemYoussef) I didn't know that Donald Trump was fluent in Nazi

In Israel, left-leaning newspaper columnist Chemi Shalev said the remarks “must have delighted the Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”, the leader of Isis.

“For some Jews, the sight of thousands of supporters waving their fists in anger as Trump incited against Muslims and urged a blanket ban on their entry to the United States could have evoked associations with beer halls in Munich a century ago,” he wrote.

Usama Sallah, a prominent Palestinian businessman in Jerusalem who lived in the US for 14 years, said Trump’s statements were “a shame”.

“This is not the United States that I knew, and I’m sure that the majority of the Americans don’t agree with it because it doesn’t represent American values,” Sallah said.



In the West Bank, Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American business consultant who moved from Youngstown, Ohio, to the Palestinian-controlled city of Ramallah in the 1990s, called the comments disgraceful and absurd.

“The backlash is going to be against Muslims. The Muslim community understands the inherent racism in some pockets of US political life.”

Bahour said relatives in the US have been telling him “how they are hearing comments in the street, supermarkets, really racist comments. It’s not going to be the same being a Muslim in America, even once this passes”.

In Pakistan, Imtisal Ahmed, a student of linguistics at the NUML university in Islamabad, linked Trump’s proposal to last week’s killings in California by Pakistan-born female shooter Tashfeen Malik and her husband.

“We admit that she has done a very bad thing, but the whole Muslim nation should not be punished over one bad act of some individual. If this ban is imposed, many students won’t be able to go and study in the United States.”

The impact of Trump’s comments and his supporters’ reaction reached right across south-east Asia, including Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-dominated state, and into Australia.

Somchai Jewangma, an officer with Thailand’s Sheikhul Islam Office, which governs the country’s Muslims said: “This is just a policy to please those who don’t like Muslims, and to gain more support.

“It’s true that there are Muslim extremists, those who don’t have good intentions for Islam. But there are 1.7 billion Muslim people in the world. If we were all bad, then the world would be uninhabitable.”

Nur Jazlan Mohamad, Malaysian deputy home minister, said the proposal is not aligned with America’s image as tolerant and democratic, and could play into the Islamic State group’s hands by alienating Muslims who are already in the US.

“His proposal reflects the thinking of many people in America, and this is worrying.”

In Australia, Azra Khan, president of the Canberra Islamic Centre, said Trump’s proposal was the wrong way to address last week’s attack.

“Clearly Donald Trump is trying to inflame the situation. Clearly this tragedy is not about Muslims. He could better improve the situation if he were to say: ‘Let the US take guns more seriously and ban them.’ That one simple solution would be much more suitable and make the streets of America far safer.”

In Indonesia, Yenny Wahid, daughter of the former Indonesia president and Islamic activist, told the Guardian: “I think the perspective of people here in Indonesia is that they see Donald Trump as a loser. We don’t really take his comments seriously.”

Kate Lamb in Jakarta, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.



