nbcnews.com

After last week’s spate of Islamophobic remarks by Republican candidates (see: here and here), GOP presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has delivered another doozy.

In what is becoming a dismayingly familiar conflation of church and state by Republicans in this campaign, Carson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would officially not support the notion of a Muslim commander in chief (via BBC):

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” he told NBC’s Meet The Press.

[…] He said he believed the president’s faith should be consistent with the US constitution. Asked if he considered Islam to be consistent, he said: “No, I do not.”

Mr Trump faced mounting criticism last week for failing to challenge a comment by one of his supporters, who said President Obama “was a Muslim” and “not even American.”

When “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Carson, who in a recent poll had dropped to third place behind Trump and former Hewlett-Packard boss Carly Fiorina, whether Carson might back a Muslim congressperson, Carson replied that “Congress is a different story … it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”

But he didn’t elaborate, nor did Todd push him to do so, about exactly how a document like the Constitution — which takes great pains to say that freedom of religion must be guaranteed and the apparatus of the state kept out of the realm of belief — presents a faith-based blueprint with which some religions align better than others.

Watch Carson state his position in the clip (via NBC News) below:

–Posted by Kasia Anderson

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#ahmed mohamed#barack obama#ben carson#constitution#donald trump#gop#islam#islamophobia#muslim#president#republicans