Joe Lane
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Though not everyone in the GOP is ignorantly opposed to the Muslim community in the United States and around the world, a vocal minority led by presidential candidates and elected members of U.S. Congress are.

“I will absolutely apologize sometime in the hopefully distant future if I’m ever wrong,” the ever-arrogant Donald Trump said during an appearance in September on the “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”

According to CNN, just over a week ago, Trump made numerous claims, in reference to the 9/11 attacks, that “thousands of people were cheering as the building was coming down.”

Trump doubled down later that weekend saying, “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.”

Yet Trump’s claims remain largely unsubstantiated, and many have note that police say it didn’t happen at all. Contrary to what he said two months ago on the “Tonight Show,” Donald Trump is still insisting that he is correct. Despite an overwhelming lack of evidence, Trump says he will neither apologize nor admit he was wrong.

Several GOP candidates are shamelessly producing anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy plans that unnecessarily alienate these American citizens. Certainly, much of the rhetoric from the candidates focuses less on current Muslim-Americans and more on incoming refugees, but the stereotyping is terrible nonetheless.

While I would like to attack Trump’s proposed policy of forcing all Muslims in the United States to register, it’s almost too easy to point out the error of his ways. So I will first focus on presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee’s comments.

According to AP, Huckabee said that he’d “like for Barack Obama to resign if he’s not going to protect America and instead protect the image of Islam.”

What former Gov. Huckabee fails to understand is that President Obama continuing to allow Syrian refugees into the country is not an effort to protect the image of Islam. It is an effort to protect that for which the United States stands. To Huckabee I would say, if you believe failing to bar refugees from the United States is not protecting the country, then you do not understand why this country exists in the first place.

The same can be said of Ben Carson. Carson, according to the AP, said that allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. would be the equivalent of exposing a neighborhood to a “rabid dog.”

A Gallup poll released just before Thanksgiving indicated that 84 percent of Republicans disapprove of allowing Syrian refugees into the country — so perhaps the comments of these GOP hopefuls are simply grounded in producing better poll results.

But when the hateful GOP rhetoric began to gain steam after the attacks in Paris, I couldn’t help but think of a quote by Martin Niemöller, a prominent opponent of Adolf Hitler. Niemöller said, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The only forum I have to express my fear about the rhetoric of the GOP is this. I only wish the GOP — voters and politicians — would understand the implications of their statements.