Trump went on British TV and said Muslims are 'protecting' suspected terrorists
Here's what Trump said:
"It's like they're [Muslims] protecting each other, but they're really doing very bad damage, and they have to open up to society, they have to report the bad ones. And, you know, if you report the bad ones, all of a sudden you're not going to have the kind of problems ...
So there's something going on and I would say this to the Muslims, and in the United States also, when they see trouble they have to report it. They're not reporting it, they're absolutely not reporting it and that's a big problem."
Trump was speaking in response to the terror attacks in Brussels which killed at least 30 people on Tuesday. Trump said Brussels today is like an "armed camp" and said that there has been no "assimilation" in the city.
"I knew Brussels years ago, I was there probably three or four times and it was so beautiful, so secure and so safe. And now it's an armed camp - I'm talking about before this new bombing. It's a different world, a different place. There's no assimilation. What's going on there and what's going on in other cities like Paris and others is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that we allow it to happen."
Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, responding to Trump's comments said:
"We've had mosques that throw extremists out of their midsts. We've had many hundreds of Muslims reporting other Muslims to the police and to counter-terror officials. We have over 90% of Muslims saying if there is any Muslim within their own community, maybe committing an attack, they would report them."
Neil Basu, a deputy assistant commissioner from the UK Counter Terrorism Policing Network, told BBC Radio 4 that while we shouldn't demonise one section of the community, there is a "generation problem" and more needs to be done to encourage reporting from Muslims. Here's what he said:
"There is a generational problem here. Without a doubt we have to encourage more reporting from the Muslim community and from all communities, because unlike in some other places in the world we do have integrated communities and we have people living side by side."
In December last year, more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from the UK. The UK parliament took it so seriously, they actually debated the issue in January.