Donald Trump sweeps 5 States in ‘Acela Corridor’ primaries. Exit polls show continued strong support for temporary ban on Muslim immigration.
This consistent support for a temporary ban on allowing non-citizen Muslims into the United States is one of the driving forces behind Trump’s candidacy. It doesn’t seem to receive a great deal of attention above the fold right now, but the perception of Trump as a hard-nosed realist who will push this policy through when in office may help explain his recent resurgence in the GOP race.
According to exit polls conducted Tuesday by CBS News, 71% of Pennsylvania Republicans support Trump’s proposed temporary ban (and kudos to CBS for clearly describing it as a “temporary” ban on their graphic). This is in keeping with early primary state exit polls showing consistent GOP support at or above 60% in most states, almost 80% in Alabama and Arkansas, and nearly 75% in South Carolina and Tennessee.
The idea has growing support with the general populace as well. A YouGov/Huffington Post poll from mid-March found that a majority — 51 percent— of Americans support the temporary ban, up from 45 percent in December. Support among Independent voters for the “Muslim ban” has sharply increased to match the Republican stats: the same March HuffPo poll shows 62% of Independents in favor, up from only 42% in December. Such strong support among Independents for the temporary Muslim ban could be a factor in the general election in November.
Of course, there is the predicable outcry from Islamic grievance groups:
“When you open the door to defining what religion isn’t sufficiently American, does anyone think it’ll stop with Muslims?” says Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. [For the backstory on Haroon Moghul, see here.]
Actually, yes, we do think it would stop with Muslims, as there is really only one religion anyone can think of which continues to prove itself unable to assimilate into American and other Western cultures and societies, and which generates more than its share of terrorists and threats to American and Western lives and liberty.
Likewise, we think it would be temporary. Just as our immigration policies towards Germans relaxed after we defeated the Nazis in 1945, so decisive action now should be undertaken to lead to victory in the global war against Islamic Jihad. For should the United States in January 2017 find itself emerging out from under the cloud of Islamophilia and Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi and Turkish influence of the Obama/Clinton years, we might even dare to hope for a common sense set of rigorous immigration policies which would be able to accurately ascertain the varieties of jihadist alliances, proto-extremists, shariah sympathizers, and Islamic operatives and keep them out, while providing opportunities to those Muslims who explicitly disavow jihad, shariah law, and Islamic supremacism, in favor of embracing the liberties and responsibilities of the American Way of Life.
Here’s hoping that these strong poll numbers in favor of the temporary ban on Muslim immigration continue to grow, and that the Muslim immigration ban would be instituted on Day One by the new US President as a prudent and realistic national security measure, and that this would be one of many components, including vigorous enforcement of FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act), of a general policy stance I call “Sandboxing Islam.”
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Ralph Sidway is an Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, and author of Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad. He operates the Facing Islam blog.