Religious Registries Have A Disturbing History

Nov 25, 2016
by Irissa Cisternino

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency has renewed talk about creating some sort of national registry of Muslims entering the United States. In some versions, this is similar to the disastrous Bush database enacted after 9/11.

Though not unexpected given Trump’s campaign rhetoric over the past year and a half, the proposal is still frankly horrifying – not only because it’s a blatantly unconstitutional form of religious discrimination and persecution, but because we’ve seen this before.

After the story broke on Trump’s proposed database, a Trump surrogate cited a precedent for this type of discrimination: Japanese internment camps – one of America’s least proud moments.

But as I watched this man scramble to defend actions that were indefensible, I thought to myself, there’s a much more accurate and much uglier analogy for this: Nazi Germany.

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/religious-registries-have-a-disturbing-history