WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that people with roots in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Somalia are a threat to the Western world and pledged to suspend immigration from regions with a proven history of terrorism.

Presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton identified three US allies — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait — for allowing its citizens to fund jihadists but warned against demonising Muslim Americans.

“We have to end this distinguishing between ISIS-directed and ISIS-inspired. It doesn’t matter. It’s kind of the same thing,” said Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and former presidential candidate. “They are directing people to do it, whether they met them or not.”

Mr Rubio dropped out of the presidential race in March after losing primaries to Mr Trump but, according to some Republican sources, could be his running mate as a vice presidential candidate.

As these and other similar statements show, Muslims are back on centre stage in the American presidential debate — thanks to the Orlando massacre — although they are a little more than one per cent of the total US population.

Muslims have been there before too after the Dec 2, 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, where a Pakistani origin couple killed 14 people at a party.

But this time, because of the high casualty — 49 killed, 53 injured — and proximity of the elections — Nov 8, 2016 — have ensured that this would remain a major issue throughout the campaign.

The fact that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was an American-born, non-practising Muslim who often visited the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where he carried out this massacre — and sometimes got drunk and rowdy — will not move the focus away from the Muslims.

As expected, Mr Trump wasted little time in exploiting this tragedy to return to an issue that he believes helped him win the primaries, the fear of the unknown. Muslims are relatively new in the United States and most people know little about their faith and social habits.

In his first speech since this weekend’s unprovoked attack, Mr Trump insinuated that all Muslim immigrants posed potential threats to America’s security. He called for a ban on migrants from any part of the world with “a proven history of terrorism” against the United States or its allies and implied that Muslims already living in America were complicit in acts of domestic terrorism for failing to report these attacks in advance.

“The killer, whose name I will not use, or ever say, was born in America, of Afghan parents, who immigrated to the United States,” Mr Trump said in his nationally televised speech from St Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“Each year the United States permanently admits 100,000 immigrants from the Middle East and many more from Muslim countries outside of the Middle East,” claimed Mr Trump while pledging to stop this if elected.

Muslims, he said, would be allowed back into this country only when the United States felt it was ready to let them in, after strict security checks and protective measures at home.

“There are many radicalised people already inside our country as a result of the poor policies of the past,” said the Republican politician. “It will be much, much easier to deal with our current problem if we don’t keep on bringing in people who add to the problem.”

Mr Trump claimed that terrorist organisations were recruiting American Muslims to fight their war in the mainland US and rejected President Obama’s claim, based on an FBI report, that the Orlando shooter was a lone world.

“They’re trying to take over our children and convince them how wonderful ISIS is and how wonderful Islam is,” Mr Trump said, referring to the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group. “And we don’t know what’s happening.”

He accused American Muslims for failing to stop the shootings that killed so many Americans in Orlando and in San Bernardino.

They [Muslims] knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn’t turn them in,” he said.

“Muslim communities must cooperate with law enforcement and turn in the people who they know is bad — and they do know where they are,” he added.

Mr Trump claimed that political correctness, not blaming an entire community for individual acts, “cripples our ability to talk and think and act clearly”.

He said that liberal Americans who defend Muslims “have put political correctness above common sense, above your safety, and above all else” and declared: “I refuse to be politically correct”.

Mrs Clinton, the former secretary of state, however, warned that such “inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric” made America less safe and described proposals to ban Muslim immigration as offensive and counterproductive.

“America is strongest when we all believe we have a stake in our country and our future,” she said in a speech in Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday afternoon.

“Our open, diverse society is an asset in the struggle against terrorism, not a liability,” Mrs Clinton said.

“Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism,” she tweeted.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2016