Washington Post: Amid an outcry over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, prominent evangelist Franklin Graham has come out in support of the Republican presidential candidate’s plan, saying that he has been advocating a similar stance for months.
“For some time I have been saying that Muslim immigration into the United States should be stopped until we can properly vet them or until the war with Islam is over,” Graham wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. “Donald J. Trump has been criticized by some for saying something similar. The new Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said yesterday that he disagrees — saying that ‘such views are not what this party stands for and more importantly it’s not what this country stands for.’
“Politicians in Washington seem to be totally disconnected with reality.”
…In July, Graham, the son of Billy Graham, wrote on Facebook that the country should “should stop all immigration of Muslims to the U.S. until this threat with Islam has been settled.” That post came after four Marines and a sailor were fatally shot at military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn., by a Kuwait-born U.S. citizen from a conservative Muslim family.
“Every Muslim that comes into this country has the potential to be radicalized — and they do their killing to honor their religion and Muhammad,” Graham wrote at the time. “During World War 2, we didn’t allow Japanese to immigrate to America, nor did we allow Germans. Why are we allowing Muslims now?”
Graham has long been an outspoken critic of Islam, the Religion News Service reported:
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion” and last year called Islam “a false religion.” In 2010, he apologized after questioning President Obama’s Christian faith, saying he was “born a Muslim … and the Islamic world sees the president as one of theirs.”
“Basically for years, since 9/11, he has waged a campaign against Islam, against the rights of Muslims,” Khalilah Sabra, executive director of the Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center, told RNS in January.
