Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's persistently anti-Muslim rhetoric has kept the GOP up in arms to protect their party from being tied to Islamophobic bigots. But his latest utterance on the subject also recalls positions taken earlier by some U.S. religious leaders, to the consternation of more moderate counterparts.
A statement from Trump's campaign released Monday called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Trump stood by the policy in subsequent appearances despite widespread condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike.
While Christians in Iraq and Syria face the threat of extinction at the hands of the Islamic State terror group, the U.S. State Department remains silent on the prospect of publicly designating the atrocities against Christians and other Mideast religious minorities as "genocide."
According to a recent investigative piece by journalist Michael Isikoff for Yahoo! News, the State Department is in the midst of internal discussions to officially recognize the Yazidi people as genocide victims. But a lingering question remains: Will other religious minorities be included in the Obama administration's designation?
