Trump’s Response to Orlando Is Exactly What ISIS Wants

Donald Trump says the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida—perpetrated early Sunday morning by an Afghan American who’d pledged allegiance to ISIS—vindicates Trump’s hard line against ISIS and terrorism. In a statement Sunday evening, Trump argued that 99 percent of Afghans were radical Islamists, that Middle Eastern migrants should be kept out of the United States, and that anyone who refused to “say the words ‘Radical Islam’ ” in the hours after the Orlando massacre should be disqualified from the presidency. There can be no integration, the statement argues—no attempt to “ ‘make peace and mix’ with those who hate the faith.” Muslims must follow ISIS: “We are the People of the Quran.” The statement claims that the armies arrayed against ISIS “wage war against us … because we command the worship of Allah. Three months ago, Trump declared that “Islam hates us” and refused to distinguish radical Muslims from Muslims in general, arguing that “it’s very hard to separate because you don’t know who is who.” On Friday, just before the Orlando attack, he told an audience of conservative Christians that he would “defend Christian Americans” and clamp down on the influx of “Syrian refugees.” In short, Trump would undercut everything that’s working against ISIS: Muslim governments that have joined our military campaign, clerics who are articulating moderate Islam, ministries and activists who are working online to discredit jihadism. In its Ramadan message, ISIS urged its sympathizers in the West to wage jihad in their own countries, “to make examples of the crusaders, day and night, scaring them and terrorizing them, until every neighbor fears his neighbor.” That’s the purpose of the attacks in Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, and Orlando: to terrorize us, to polarize us, to make every neighbor fear his neighbor.