Inquirer editorial: Trump response would incite terrorists

Leave it to Donald Trump to express absolutely the wrong view on the terrorist attacks that left at least 30 people dead and more than 200 injured in Belgium Tuesday.

"Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it's a disaster city. It's a total disaster," Trump said. "And we have to be very careful in the United States, we have to be very careful and very vigilant as to who we allow in the country."

The Republican presidential candidate seems intent on making America's open society as closed as the European nations that have become breeding grounds for the terrorist acts being committed by disconnected, disaffected immigrants.

Since 9/11, terrorism in America has largely been limited to lone-wolf attacks by individuals who in several instances had a history of mental illness. That contrasts greatly with the explosions that rocked the main airport and a subway station in Brussels, apparently coordinated by a terrorist cell involving numerous people. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The attacks occurred four days after the capture in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor among 10 suspects in the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in and near Paris. Those attacks also drew attention to isolated immigrant communities in France, Belgium, and elsewhere in Europe where frustrated, jobless young men are attracted to radical Islamist ideology.

That a number of Americans are known to have joined ISIS shows this nation isn't immune to radicalism. But the more inclusive treatment that immigrants have been afforded in this country has diluted the strength of appeals to American Muslims to join jihadists in establishing an Islamic caliphate.

That's because America's history is different from Europe's. Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University, explains that "the residue of racial and cultural prejudices of the colonial era" remains in Europe. Many European Muslims live in isolated ghettos populated by families that emigrated from the former colonies, such as Algeria and Morocco in France's case.

Muslim immigrants in America, conversely, come from many countries and are not typically segregated. A Pew Research study showed that Muslims are also as likely as other Americans to graduate from college, report household incomes of $100,000 or more, and be generally satisfied with their economic lot in life.

America's existence as a pluralistic society that offers opportunities for immigrants to succeed - and for adherents of various faiths to coexist - has helped limit the threat of the type of domestic terrorism that has taken such a terrible toll on the people of Belgium.

This country has appropriately pledged to "stand in solidarity with Belgium," as President Obama put it, to bring the guilty to justice. But this nation should not follow any suggestion that it abandon the very principles that have helped safeguard it against domestic terrorism.

The United States must be vigilant in rooting out the internal threats to national security that do exist. But it also must guard against cultivating the hatred that breeds terrorism by unnecessarily imposing xenophobic policies.