The US presidential candidate Donald Trump has built part of his current success on playing on people’s fears of Hispanic and “Muslim terrorist” immigrants. As for the rest of his campaign promises, they are the same as those of rival candidates; the customary issues such as jobs, health and education. He has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country until the government can differentiate between good ones and bad ones.

Americans usually take pride in the fact that they have immigrant origins and that this is the secret of their country’s success and its greatness, and this is certainly true. Arabs and Muslims arrived 200 years ago in the US and participated in building the state. They have their share in this historical legacy.

When Trump uses the word “Muslims”, he does not explain what it means. The world’s Muslims amount to 1 billion people made up of different nationalities, just like Christians. There are Chinese, European Albanian, Nigerian and Indian Muslims. There are Muslims of all European nationalities and most countries don’t write citizens’ religions on passports. So how will they be identified?

There are Muslims with Chinese, Indian and western names that don’t begin with “Muhammad” or “Abdullah”. As with Christianity, there are different sects in Islam.

If Trump decided to limit the ban to Arab Muslims, there are more than 15 million Arab Christians. How will he recognise them? In addition to this, what will he do with the 5 million American Muslims, some of whose grandfathers may have arrived on ships before Trump’s grandfather and who consider themselves to be as American as Trump?

Trump is just another politician whose main concern is to make it to the White House. I do not believe that he means what he says against Muslims as he has had personal relationships and business dealings with them since decades ago and still does to this day – more than most Americans.

Anyone who has listened to the promises of former candidates during the past decades knows that they are subject to the laws and constitution of the country which are considered higher than the decisions of the president and congress.

I do not think that there is anything legal that remains to be done against bad Muslims that has not been applied by former presidents, whether that be with regards to illegal immigration or the surveillance of Muslims. It is unfortunate that Trump is breaking the ethical norms and rules respected by most US presidential candidates by bringing ethnicity and religion into the competition.