Trump: It’s Islam vs Christianity
Incoming US president says Muslim religion is really root of violence
The world is simple, according to US President-elect Donald Trump, and so are the problems besetting it. The latest terror attacks in Berlin and Ankara, according to Trump, are but manifestations of an ongoing war between Christianity and Islam. The violence, he said, is rooted in Islam itself. For someone who wants to ban entry to Muslims, the analysis is not surprising.
WASHINGTON—Berlin police have yet to even put their hands on the right suspect after a truck ploughed into a Christmas market and left 12 people dead.
But Donald Trump has no doubts about what happened.
Just three hours after Monday’s apparent attack, the US president-elect had branded it the latest outrage in what he sees as a global religious war.
His language was a dramatic departure from howWestern leaders generally respond to Islamist extremism but reflected the tone of his campaign.
“Innocent civilians were murdered in the streets as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday,” he declared, in a statement from his office.
“ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.”
Trump made this case be- fore German police released for lack of evidence a Pakistani asylum-seeker who was arrested after the truck attack.
And he spoke even before Amaq, a jihadist-linked news agency, claimed that the Islamic State group was behind the ramming of the market.
Trump resorted to similar language to condemn the mur- der, on the same day, of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey by a “radical Islamic terrorist.”
His decision to focus on the presumed religion of the attackers was a deliberately chosen contrast with the policy of Barack Obama.
The seasoned US leader called Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday to offer his condolences on “the horrific apparent terrorist attack.”
Obama and his generals and diplomats praise Muslim governments that have joined in the struggle.
Trump, however, has a different set of advisers and apparent beliefs: Extremism can only be defeated if we identify it as springing from Islam itself.
In a statement confronting criticisms that link the terror attack to her policy to let in refugees from the Middle East, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she found it hard to explain how preventing the influx of refugees could help in the fight against terror.
“This would be particularly sickening for the many, many Germans who work to help refugees every day and for the many people who really need our help and are making an effort to integrate in our country,” she said. —AFP, AP