Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 23:16:12 +0100
Donald Trump isn't backing down from remarks he made that were used by the Somali militant group al Shabaab in a recruiting video aimed at would-be followers in the US.
The video by al Shabaab, which has long been allied with al Qaeda, was released on Friday. It features a clip of Trump delivering his speech in November that called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."
Trump stood by his remarks on Sunday during an interview with Face the Nation host John Dickerson. The frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination claimed he was merely speaking out about an issue that he feels is important, and that blowback from Islamist militant groups is to be expected.
"Look, there's a problem," he said. "I bring it up. Other people have called me to say, 'You have guts to bring it up because frankly, it's true but nobody wants to get involved.' Now people are getting involved."
When Dickerson asked how Trump felt about being used in "a recruitment video by a terrorist organization," the businessman and reality TV star, who has also called for a mosque surveillance system and a database to track the movements of all Muslims living in the US, further defended his stance.
"They use other people, too. What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say," Trump said. "And you [know] what I have to say? There's a problem. We have to find out what is a problem. And we have to solve that problem."
Trump's appearance in the 51-minute al Shabaab video was preceded by old clips of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical US-born cleric and prominent al Qaeda figurehead who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011. "There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon," al-Awlaki said in a warning to American Muslims.
"Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching and Ku Klux Klan," the cleric said. "Tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps. The West will eventually turn on its Muslim citizens."
Though he has maintained his lead in the polls, Trump was lambasted by Republicans and Democrats alike after he issued his call for a ban on Muslims entering the US, with Hillary Clinton, the current favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, saying he was becoming the Islamic State's "best recruiter."
The al Shabaab video, titled "The Path to Paradise 2," is the second episode in a series on American jihadis from Minnesota who were killed fighting in Somalia. Roughly 22 young men have left the state since 2007 to join the militant group.