WASHINGTON: From the White House to neighbourhood churches and synagogues, all key American institutions got together on Tuesday to condemn Republican politician Donald Trump’s demand that the United States immediately bar all Muslims from entering the country.

Soon after he released his statement on Monday evening, Mayor Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg, Florida, said he had decided to “ban the leading Republican presidential candidate from entering his city”.

“I am hereby barring Donald Trump from entering St. Petersburg until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps,” Mr Kriseman tweeted.

Within hours, his tongue-in-cheek tweet was re-tweeted by thousands of Americans. “Tweet of the year,” declared one of them.

Mr Trump made his remarks a day after President Barack Obama addressed his nation and urged Americans not to turn against Muslims in the wake of the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, on Dec 2.

“He’s dividing America in a really cynical way,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “You’re being generous by describing it as a proposal,” Mr Earnest told an MSNBC television host who asked him to comment on the “proposal.”

“I think what Mr Trump is doing is something that he’s been doing over the course of his entire campaign, which is to play on people’s fears in order to build support for his campaign,” said the White House official.

President Barack Obama’s top foreign policy aides, Ben Rhodes, told CNN that Mr Trump was endorsing the views of the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

“The fact of the matter is that IS wants to frame this as a war between the United States and Islam,” he said. “If we look like we apply religious tests to who comes into this country, we are sending a message that essentially we are embracing that.”

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton also blasted Mr Trump’s plan on Twitter, calling it “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.”

“This makes us less safe,” she added.

Mrs Clinton’s political secretary Huma Abedin sent out a message, declaring: “I’m a proud Muslim”. But “you don’t have to share my faith to share my disgust,” she wrote while reminding Americans that “Donald Trump is leading in every national poll to be the Republican nominee for president.”

“Mr Trump wants to literally write racism into our law books. His Islamophobia doesn’t reflect our nation’s values — it goes far enough to damage our country’s reputation and could even threaten our national security,” she wrote.

Mr Trump’s statement also upset other Republican presidential candidates.

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said in a radio interview that the proposal was more evidence that Mr Trump should not be president.

“This is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about,” Mr Christie said.

“Donald Trump is unhinged. His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious,” tweeted Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2015