The opposition to Donald Trump has gone global.
Trump is facing international condemnation and criticism for his plan to prevent foreign Muslims from entering the United States. But foreign criticism of the Republican front-runner isn’t entirely new.
In mid-August, Trump was placed on an enemy watch-list in Ukraine after suggesting he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would “get along great” should he become president. The list, published by a Ukrainian website and later taken down after attracting significant media attention, named Trump among other “enemies,” “traitors,” “separatists” and “agents of the Kremlin Worldwide.”
In late November, a Scottish woman petitioned Parliament to consider banning Trump from entering the United Kingdom. The petition was made available for U.K. residents to sign on Tuesday and has since garnered over 300,000 signatures – far more than the 100,000 required to move it to a debate in the House of Commons. A spokeswoman for Parliament’s Petitions Committee confirmed in an email to the Washington Examiner that the committee will gather on Jan. 5 to set a date for Parliament to debate the proposal.
Trump has already been stripped of an honorary business degree from Robert Gordon University in the U.K. and on Wednesday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revoked the real estate magnate’s status as a business ambassador for Scotland.
“Mr Trump’s recent remarks have shown that he is no longer fit to be a business ambassador for Scotland and the first minister has decided his membership of the respected GlobalScot business network should be withdrawn with immediate effect,” a spokesman for Sturgeon told local media. Trump has been an ambassador for GlobalScot, an enterprise agency of the Scottish government, since 2006.
By “recent remarks,” Surgeon’s spokesperson is referring to Trump’s latest proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States.
The controversial proposal, billed by the billionaire’s campaign as a necessary measure to ensure national security, made headlines for both its audaciousness and for inviting international scorn; many describe it as “bigoted,” while others claim it flies in the face of religious freedom.
Foreign figures across the globe have begun using it to condemn Trump’s candidacy, and some have mirrored the effort by U.K. residents to ban Trump himself from entering their country.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted his disapproval early Wednesday morning, saying (originally in French): “Mr. Trump, like others, feeds the hatred and the confusion: our ONLY enemy is radical Islamism.”
Soon after Valls spoke out, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron, who, until now, has refrained from publicly criticizing a U.S. presidential candidate, said Britain’s leader “completely disagrees with the comments made by Donald Trump which are divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, joined the choir, joking that “the only reason [he] wouldn’t visit some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.” And Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the proposal was “very unhelpful and very discriminatory.”
In Canada, New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair suggested restricting Trump’s ability to visit the bordering U.S. ally.
“I say we should limit access to Canada for people who are spouting hatred and we should make sure that Donald Trump stays out of Canada,” he told reporters.
Influential figures and political groups in the Middle East also decried the candidate’s anti-Muslim plan.
According to the Times of Israel, 37 members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) penned a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday demanding that he cancel his upcoming meeting with Trump, scheduled for Dec. 28. Two of the members also called for blocking Trump from visiting Israel, but Netanyahu’s office declined to approved either request.
Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, an official Islamic religious institution in the country, slammed Trump’s comments as “extremist” and a threat to peace in the United States. “Such hostile attitude toward Islam and Muslims will increase tension within the American society of which Muslims represent around 8 million peaceful and loyal American citizens.”
Khalaf Al Habtoor, an Arab billionaire who’s chairman of a business conglomerate in the United Arab Emirates, has walked back his decision to endorse Trump in an August column for the Gulf newspaper, The National.
“I wrote an article supporting him … I said we are fed up with the politicians, they have destroyed the Middle East … [but] when he was talking about Muslims, attacking them, I had to admit I made a mistake in my supporting Mr. Trump,” Al Habtoor told NBC News.
“He is creating a hatred between Muslims and the United States of America,” he added.
Elsewhere, prominent Islamic activists continued the trend of condemning Trump’s grouping together of all Muslims.
“The majority of Muslims in Indonesia are arch enemies of ISIS so if Trump’s intention is to stop ISIS, then he should have asked for our help, not just put us in the same corner,” said Yenny Wahid, the daughter of former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid.
“It shows how ignorant Donald Trump is to the state of the world,” she added.
