President Trump has thrown down the gauntlet to state and local leaders who have been quick to limit and even ban in-person church services during the coronavirus outbreak, asking if the same strict regulations would apply to mosques during Ramadan.
Haaretz reports that on April 18 Trump retweeted a conservative author who asked: Would mosques be subjected to the same social-distancing restrictions during Ramadan as churches were during Easter?
It’s almost as if Muslim places of worship are typically treated more generously by the media, and subsequently by local governments and law enforcement.
At the White House press conference on April 18, a reporter read the tweet back to the president, who responded: “I would like to see that.”
Apparently he too, has been wondering if local authorities would treat mosques differently than churches have been treated, with one state going so far as to have police write down license-plate numbers of church attendees.
The reporter followed up, asking if Trump was suggesting that imams wouldn’t follow social-distancing guidelines.
“I just had a call with imams,” Trump said. “I just had a call with ministers, rabbis. We had a tremendous call with the faith leaders. No, I don’t think that at all. I am someone that believes in faith. And it matters not what your faith is but our politicians seem to treat different faiths very differently. And they seem to think and I don’t know what happened with our country, but the Christian faith is treated much differently than it was, and I think it’s treated very unfairly.”
