Trump’s stance towards Islam is mild compared to other world leaders.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

As liberals and progressives continue to portray Donald Trump as an intolerant brute for suggesting a ban on Muslims entering the United States, “until we figure out what’s going on,” left unsaid (perhaps intentionally) is the fact that he is hardly the first international personage to suggest this.

Most recently, the heads of the Christian church of Samoa called for a complete ban on Islam:

Samoa’s council of churches has welcomed the prime minister’s call to review the religious freedom provisions of the constitution.

Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi recently said the country’s supreme law may be changed to recognise Christian principles and teachings, not just in the preamble.

However the Secretary General of the Samoa Council of Churches, Reverend Ma’auga Motu, said he would go a step further and ban the religion of Islam.

He said even though most Samoans are Christian, Islam poses a future threat to the country.

“We are not going too far, no,” Reverend Motu said. “We are still wanting our own people to be prevented from this kind of influence, even though there are so many people who are good people but still there are some dangerous people among them who might come and threaten our peace.”

There is a small Muslim population in Samoa that gathers at a mosque and there is the Samoa Muslim League based near Apia. [According to the 2001 census, 0.03% of Samoan residents indicated they were Muslim].

Some reflections:

Note the sheer simplicity of the Samoan position: there are dangerous elements within Islam—a simple, obvious fact for anyone with a shred of common sense—and Samoans don’t want this “future threat to the country.”

Samoan Christian leaders understand that if most Muslims will not engage in subversive acts, some always will: “even though there are so many people who are good people but still there are some dangerous people among them who might come and threaten our peace.”

Indeed, even now, ISIS operatives are passing for refugees into the West—to say nothing of the many like-minded Muslims, both those entering and who were born in the West.

Instead of burdening themselves with trying to determine who is who—ultimately an exercise in futility since the “moderate” always morphs into the “radical” without notice—the heads of Samoa’s Christian church seek to ban the whole thing. They understand that if you ingest a beverage that is only 1% poisoned, it won’t matter that 99% of it was clean. You will still suffer. The only sure way to preserve your health is not to put it into your body in the first place.

Unfortunately for the people of the West, most of their leaders are more interested in maintaining feel good narratives than they are in preventing cancerous cells into the body politic. The thousands of Americans killed by jihadi terror over the years—most recently, about 50 in Orlando—are just the price the elite are willing to pay to keep the lie of multiculturalism afloat.

More commonsensical Samoans know that the only sure way of not dying from Russian Roulette is—don’t play Russian Roulette. In this, the Pacific island joins nations as diverse as Hungary and Myanmar, both of which are vociferous in their attempts to ban or minimize Islam’s presence from their soil.

All of these nations get criticized by liberal media and talking heads that have no criticism for worse behavior from Muslim nations. Non-Muslims are barred from becoming citizens in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Muslim nations. In the Saudi kingdom, not a single non-Muslim house of worship—not a church, synagogue, or temple—is permitted to exist. Non-Muslims may work in these countries, but as undesirable “infidels,” they are denied citizenship.

Yet, to liberal media and talking heads, that’s okay: it’s Muslims’ right to allow and bar whoever they want. But when nations like Hungary, Myanmar, and Samoa try to ban Islam—not out of religious bigotry or because Muslims are “undesirable infidels,” but because of its well documented violent and subversive tendencies—then woe, all is woe.

Perhaps the most important lesson here is that Trump is not alone. The real question shouldn’t be “how dare he propose such a thing?!” but rather, why are growing numbers of diverse nations—European, Asian, now Pacific islanders—all reluctant to let Islam within their borders?