Getty In The Arena What Trump and Cruz’s Clueless Muslim Rhetoric Will Cost America

Tom Ridge, founder and Chairman of Ridge Global, served as the 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania and was the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Learn more @RidgeGlobal.

“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”

I was proud to be an American the day our president spoke those words. No, not our current president. That quote came from President George W. Bush exactly six days after the 9/11 attacks. At a time when many Americans were understandably concerned about radical Muslims doing further harm—with the visions of the Twin Towers collapsing and the Pentagon smoldering still fresh in their minds—President Bush chose that moment not to fan the flames of anger and fear, but to underscore the many contributions of Muslim-Americans.


“America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens,” the president said during a purposefully public visit to an Islamic Center in Washington, “and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”

In that emotionally super-charged time in our nation’s history, when it would have been easier to align himself with xenophobes looking for a reason to lash out at their Muslim neighbors, President Bush instead reminded all Americans that ours is a great nation because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth.

How do we juxtapose such leadership with the ill-conceived and incendiary campaign rhetoric of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? The former seeks a temporary ban on all Muslims entering our country. The latter’s response to the Brussels attack is to increase patrols and surveillance in Muslim communities.

There is a sad and troubling irony here. By refusing to call them radical Islamic terrorists, our incumbent president is unwilling to make the distinction between the few Muslims who have wrapped their terror in the cloak of the second largest faith in the world from peaceful and law-abiding Muslims. And two men who hope to succeed him are incapable of making a similar distinction.

The reality is that these perspectives undermine serious efforts to combat this global scourge domestically. For presidential candidates to suggest that the broader Muslim community writ large poses a threat is both wrong and counterproductive. Law enforcement needs the cooperation of the Muslim community to identify potential terrorists within. We need stronger relationships with those communities and such self-serving rhetoric complicates law enforcement efforts to do so.

There is another problem with the proposed policies of Trump and Cruz: They are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The political speak of Trump or Cruz can be reduced to a few simple disturbing sentences. All Muslims are potential terrorists, so ban entry to the United States. All residing in Muslim communities are potential terrorists, so we need increased police activity in those neighborhoods. This is hardly a constitutionally conservative approach to reducing the threat of a terrorist attack. They might instead emulate the constructive approach taken recently by New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who is hiring more Muslim officers to build a bridge of trust and solidarity within the community.

A few days after President Bush spoke at the Islamic Center, he introduced me at a Joint Session of Congress as the director of a newly created office of Homeland Security, which ultimately led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The men and women of the department were routinely faced with decisions balancing security with personal freedom. Our vision statement read: Preserving our freedoms, protecting America … We secure our homeland.

Our first responsibility was to preserve our civil liberties and we felt confident in our choices because we knew how strongly our commander-in-chief felt about safeguarding our democratic values. After 9/11, President Bush met daily for over three years with Attorney General Ashcroft, FBI Director Mueller and me. Never once did I leave that meeting with a mixed message. The president, a man of faith, reinforced his public message with frequent reminders that targeting individuals solely because of their religious beliefs was unacceptable. We all understood the importance of building and sustaining bridges of trust within the Muslim community.

Candidly, it’s difficult to know where Trump or Cruz stand today or will stand tomorrow. But it is troubling when candidates appear to believe the best way to safeguard America is to target all who share a particular religious belief.

In my 2009 book, The Test of our Times, I observed that there are probably haters in America, but fortunately they are a small fraction of our population. Of greater concern is that very few Americans are familiar with Muslim history, religion or culture. It is exactly that ignorance that first Trump and now Cruz are tapping into. Rather than embrace the approach of President Bush, who in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil chose to stand in solidarity with Muslim-Americans, Trump and Cruz exploit a baseless fear and anger directed at all Muslims for short-term political advantage. At least one Republican candidate, John Kasich, is unwilling to travel down that dangerous road.

We are an exceptional country, not a perfect one. At the heart of America is a much treasured value system cherished by us and admired around the world. If America is a unique product, then our constitutionally protected value system is our brand. The world holds us to a higher standard of conduct for which we should be both grateful and accountable. Banning those who embrace specific religious beliefs or increasing surveillance among those within our country, without warrant or probable cause is unacceptable, un-American, and an assault on the religious diversity protected by the first amendment.

America can only lead the global efforts against the scourge of radical Islam if it preserves its moral authority to do so. Our efforts will be limited and our brand diminished if we do any less.